Shared Governance: Virginia's Empowering Nursing Leaders Speak

Shared governance, a managerial structure that supports clinical decision- making by staff members, is a key empowerment mechanism in nursing organizations today. In many Magnet (TM) organizations, the shared governance model is the cornerstone of the forces of magnetism.(1) Nursing literature is replete with shared governance successes and continued explorations of the model. This body of work suggests that healthcare organizations with shared governance models have stronger patient outcomes. This is supported in the business literature by Argyris, who states that the real measurement of empowerment's success is performance improvement; factors such as satisfaction and commitment are secondary.(2) Regardless of the outcomes, today's nursing leaders believe in shared governance's principles and are implementing and updating models in their organizations.