Mercy Medical Center Receives Accreditation From The Forum of Shared Governance

The internationally recognized Forum for Shared Governance announced that it has awarded its shared governance accreditation to Mercy Medical Center. Shared Governance is an innovative management model that assures nurses are the ones making clinical decisions at the bedside, while authorizing them to control the resources that support them.

“Shared governance empowers bedside nurses as patient advocates, to make decisions regarding care delivery tailored to each patient’s specific needs. Receiving this accreditation is another indication of Mercy’s commitment to providing patients with quality care,” said Kim Bushnell, DNP, RN, Vice President, Patient Care Services & CNO.

Through rigorous survey of all nursing staff, managers, and administrators, Mercy Medical Center has demonstrated that, indeed, it is nurses who are make decisions directly impacting clinical patient care in their hospital. Shared governance has been associated with better professional, organizational, and patient outcomes.

Dr. Robert Hess, CEO & Founder, Forum for Shared Governance reported, “Because shared governance as a work environment carries so much marketing appeal to nurses, many hospitals claim to have it, when they don’t. They put a structure in place in name only. By using extensive survey methodology, the Forum for Shared Governance has been able to determine whether a hospital has real shared governance. Mercy Medical Center is one of those institutions.”

The Forum for Shared Governance is a clearing house for promoting and disseminating research about shared governance and similar organizational innovations that help empower nurses and other healthcare professionals in their workplaces. It owns rights to the only methods of quantifying the presence of shared governance. Its instruments have been used by hundreds of hospitals in the US and worldwide for more than 20 years.