Anchoring a Professional Practice Model:: Success Through Collaboration

Abstract

Developing a professional practice model (PPM) is essential to articulating professional nursing practice. The PPM serves as a theoretical, practical, and visual representation of the underlying culture and nursing practice. This article describes one organization’s experience engaging clinical nurses in developing, implementing, and evaluating a new PPM as part of the Magnet® journey. Transformational nurse leaders collaborated with staff and empowered them to take ownership of their practice by developing the PPM and embedding it into nursing processes at all levels, including a restructuring of the shared governance model. Both pre- and post-implementation evaluation of the PPM confirmed that it was strongly aligned with nursing practice. Collaboration to successfully integrate a PPM can create a common identity for nurses in diverse practice settings and roles within an organization. Developing a professional practice model (PPM) is essential to articulating professional nursing practice. The PPM serves as a theoretical, practical, and visual representation of the underlying culture and nursing practice. This article describes one organization’s experience engaging clinical nurses in developing, implementing, and evaluating a new PPM as part of the Magnet® journey. Transformational nurse leaders collaborated with staff and empowered them to take ownership of their practice by developing the PPM and embedding it into nursing processes at all levels, including a restructuring of the shared governance model. Both pre- and post-implementation evaluation of the PPM confirmed that it was strongly aligned with nursing practice. Collaboration to successfully integrate a PPM can create a common identity for nurses in diverse practice settings and roles within an organization. Nowai Keleekai-Brapoh, PhD, RN, NPD-BC, is the nurse researcher at Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey. She can be reached at [email protected] . Deborah Toresco, BSN, RN, NE-BC, is the Magnet program director at Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey.