Nursing Personnel' Perception Toward Shared Governance and Its Relation to their Job Empowerment

Abstract

Shared governance has been proposed as essential to improve quality patient care, contain costs, retain and empower nursing staff. The purpose of the study is to assess the perception of nursing personnel toward shared governance and its relation to their job empowerment. A descriptive correlational design was utilized to meet the aim of this study. The subjects: convenience sample included 220 staff nurses and 60 head nurses at Benha University Hospital. The instruments of data collection were professional nursing shared governance questionnaire and the conditions for work effectiveness questionnaire. Results showed that head nurses perception level were higher versus staff nurses in relation to total shared governance perception . Head nurses perception were higher (33.3% versus 16.4%) than staff nurses in the study setting related to total job empowerment. Statistically, staff nurses had a low level of perception (20.0%versus none) regarding shared governance and job empowerment in the study setting. There was a highly statistical correlation between shared governance and job empowerment among nursing personnel in the study setting. Conclusions: It was concluded that head nurses perception toward both shared governance and job empowerment was higher than staff nurses in the study setting. Recommendation: updated universal protocols and guidelines about shared governance model must be used in the study setting. In- service training and educational programs must be a continuous process for increasing cognitive abilities of nursing personnel underlying decision making.