Meaningful Participation and Effective Communication in Shared Governance

“Shared governance (SG) is an organizational model that provides a structure for shared decision-making among professionals about practice and clinical outcomes. With successful implementation, shared governance legitimizes [professionals'] decision making control over their practice while extending their influence to some administrative areas previously controlled by managers.”1 Recently, the shared governance (SG) structure underwent extensive redesign at our organization, a large, free-standing children's hospital in the Midwest. Our new, Interprofessional Shared Governance model is grounded in 2 fundamental premises: one, for the best decision making to occur, those directly involved in that area of practice must be involved in decision making about that practice; and two, the majority of decision making about practice should be occurring at the point of care (POC). By actualizing these 2 premises, nurses and allied health professionals from all settings and roles are empowered to actively and meaningfully participate in all levels of organizational decision making.