Shared Governance
Shared Governance is a collaborative, supportive and empowering model that brings together nursing staff to focus on issues that affect their work.
Our nurses lead and participate on shared governance councils that report to the Nursing Executive Council. These councils include:
- Clinical Development Council
- Clinical Practice Council
- Nursing Research Council
- Nursing Advisory Council
- Patient Safety & Medication Safety Council
Nursing Work Groups
Within each Nursing Council, Nursing Work Groups address specific areas:
- Clinical Policy & Procedure
- Nursing Communication
- Unit Based Councils
- Diabetes
- Ethics ACEs
- End of Life/Code Blue
- Organ Donation
- Renal Transplant
- Peer Review
- ERP
- Falls
- Pain
- Perinatal Safety
- Skin
- Informatics
Nursing Professional Practice Model
Why do we need a Nursing Professional Practice Model?
Our Nursing Professional Practice Model is a visual that describes how we practice, collaborate, communicate, and develop professionally. It allows us to view the "what" "how" "why" and "who" components that affect our practice. Our Professional Practice Model provides our nurse with knowledge and a voice, with ways to advance professionally, and with ways to guide each other to care for ourselves and others.
Key components of our model:
- Who we serve holds the center space of the model, signifying where all of our nursing practice energy is directed.
- Inside the green ring are the five Core Values of the faith-based hospital where we have chosen to practice. This provides the “why we do what we do.”
- The blue ring specifies how we do what we do (3 Domains of nursing practice).
- The outer ring identifies the supporting structures that encompass all we do.
Jean Watson's "Theory of Human Caring" was selected by the Clinical Practice Council with input from staff nurses throughout the hospital. At St. Joseph Hospital, our nursing theory is reflected in our nursing culture and practice. Jean Watson's theory focuses on “the entire nature of the individual in his/her physical, social, esthetic, and moral realms."
Core Principles
- Practice of loving-kindness and equanimity
- Authentic presence: Enabling deep belief of others
- Cultivation of one's own spiritual practice beyond ego
- Being" the caring-healing environment
- Allowing for miracles
The Ten Caritas Process
Guidelines for putting the Theory of Human Caring practice into action are realized through these 10 caritas:
- Practicing loving-kindness and equanimity within context of caring consciousness.
- Being authentically present and enabling, and sustaining the deep belief system and subjective life world of self and one-being cared for.
- Cultivating one’s own spiritual practices and transpersonal self, going beyond ego self.
- Developing and sustaining a helping-trusting, authentic caring relationship.
- Being present to, and supportive of the expression of positive and negative feelings.
- Creatively using self and all ways of knowing as part of the caring process; engaging in artistry of caring-healing practices.
- Engaging in genuine teaching-learning experience that attends to wholeness and meaning, attempting to stay within other’s frame of reference.
- Creating healing environment at all levels, whereby wholeness, beauty, comfort, dignity, and peace are potentiated.
- Assisting with basic needs, with an intentional caring consciousness, administering ‘human care essentials,’ which potentiate alignment of mind-body-spirit, wholeness in all aspects of care.
- Opening and attending to mysterious dimensions of one’s life-death; soul care for self and the one-being-cared for; “allowing and being open to miracles.”