The pandemic challenged clinical nurses in ways we’ve never experienced, and it has been widely recognized that clinical staff experienced unprecedented levels of moral distress, burnout, and turnover. At our organization, those same sentiments were shared by the nursing professional development (NPD) team. Throughout 2020 and 2021, our team provided just-in-time dynamic education to meet the needs of rapidly changing practice standards, onboarded unparalleled levels of traditional and agency staff, and supported the emotional needs of clinical caregivers. Simultaneously, we also took clinical assignments in direct patient care to overcome staffing shortages.

At our organization, NPD is a centralized department dedicated to fostering lifelong learning and driving transformative change within the organization. This includes three inpatient hospitals, four emergency departments, numerous ambulatory settings, and a home health department. Our NPD team comprises 60 members, including NPD practitioners, specialists, managers, and directors, all under the leadership of the vice president of nursing professional development. We operate both systemwide and unit-based teams to ensure comprehensive support across the organization, including inpatient, ambulatory, and home health practice areas. Our mission is to provide education and professional development opportunities that support, mentor, and empower our interprofessional healthcare staff, ensuring they are well-equipped to deliver exceptional patient care.

In 2021, a hospital-wide, annual employee engagement survey revealed that our NPD practitioners and specialists were experiencing burnout and stress related to their immense workload, and the department—once a flourishing community of experienced nurses—found itself with a 50% attrition rate. To the managers and directors, the team expressed feelings of uncertainty regarding their roles and responsibilities and felt disconnected from their peers. A few members of the NPD team hypothesized that creating our own shared governance council could be the missing ingredient to rebuild a thriving NPD department. It was important that the voice of NPD be heard.

At our four-time Magnet® Designated organization, there is a robust shared governance structure in place for clinical nurses, which plays a vital role in nursing job satisfaction. This structure creates an environment of empowerment for direct caregivers to participate in decision-making affecting their practice environment. It creates a dynamic partnership between nurse leaders and direct-care nurses to foster collaboration, shared decision making, and accountability to enhance the quality of patient care and improve nurses’ work life (Murphy et al., 2025). Our organization’s shared governance structure actively involves nursing staff in strategic plan implementation to benefit patients, families, the community, nursing staff, and the institution. It includes 11 system-wide councils, each with their own unique focus. Clinical nurses lead nine of the 11 system wide councils. There are also over 60 unit-based councils made up of clinical caregivers from individual practice areas that work on improving the culture of their practice, the nurse and patient experiences, and reducing patient harm—all with goals aligned with the nursing strategic plan. With the support of our vice president and directors, our NPD department started our own unit-based practice council to provide a space for our practitioners to convene and engage in the benefits seen within the shared governance space.

The formation of the council involved the following steps:

1. Establishing a chair, chair elect, and facilitator position.  The facilitator in a non-decision-making role that is fulfilled by either a nurse manager or assistant nurse manager. The role is supportive and encourages effective communication, accountability, and efficiency of the council. They also serve as a mentor and coach to council leaders.
2. Interviewing and choosing members to represent 10% of the practice area with varying levels of NPD experience and coverage areas, as stated by our organization’s shared governance bylaws
3. Creating a project charter and meeting schedule for the first year.

The council comprised of an NPD director as the facilitator and eight NPD practitioners and specialists. Our first order of business was to conduct a pre-survey of the entire NPD department, soliciting their rating of their confidence in performing role-related responsibilities using a Likert scale. This information was obtained to understand department needs to develop resources for both novice and competent team members in combat of distress and burnout of the team.

The survey results noted a lack of confidence in the following areas:  

• Ability to utilize the organization’s employee access platform for new hires, transfers, and agency staff. 

• Operating our existing learning management system (LMS) to assign checklists, check orientee progress, and monitor required learnings.

• Identifying NPD peers with subject matter expertise.

• Applying the concepts of Nursing Professional Development: Scope and Standards of Practice, in their role. 

Based on these insights, we got straight to work! Council members collaborated to create a repository of resources, compiling job aids, tip sheets, and tools to strengthen the team’s ability to utilize our applications, onboard staff, perform professional development activities, and apply the NPD: Scope and Standards of Practice. This repository was housed on a shared organizational Microsoft Teams page to allow ease of access. Details of the repository were shared at the departmental staff meeting and via email. In addition to the repository, the council also created an internal database housed on the Teams page to identify all NPD team members, their areas of expertise, and contact information. This would serve as a vital tool to enhance collaboration among the team.

One year after the deployment of the tools, the council re-surveyed the NPD team. The impact was profound. There was a 25% increase in confidence in operating our LMS, and 100% confidence expressed in identifying team members and areas of expertise and in applying the NPD: Scope and Standards of Practice to their role.

Prior to implementation of the council, 50% of the team had less than two years of experience in NPD due to high turnover. Three years post council implementation, only 12% of NPDs have less than two years of experience. The significant reduction in the percentage of staff with less than two years of experience indicates a marked improvement in staff retention, suggesting that the council has been effective in decreasing turnover and fostering a more stable and experienced workforce.

Currently, the council continues to manage the tools created, ensuring ongoing support and partnership among the NPD department. The toolkit has been integrated into the onboarding of new NPD practitioners as a resource to assist with day-to-day operations and increase confidence in their new role. The database has been used by NPD practitioners (NPDPs) to identify team members and develop mentoring relationships. Ongoing projects have resulted amongst NPDPs in different practice areas who connected using the database to identify individual areas of expertise. For example, two unit-based NPDPs collaborated with a system-wide NPD specialist to create unique and engaging education through animated videos.

The improvements to our NPD department highlight the value of shared governance in our nursing specialty. Shared governance in all settings is integral to improving practice environments and nurse retention, demonstrating that when the team feels supported and recognized, job satisfaction and retention rates improve.

References

Harper, M. G., & Maloney, P. (Eds.). (2022). Nursing professional development: Scope and standards of practice (4th ed.). Association for Nursing Professional Development. 

Murphy, L. M., Ford, L., & Lamoreux, M. (2025). Robust shared governance for clinical nurses. American Nurse Journal 20(1). DOI: 10.51256/ANJ012528

Porter O'Grady, T., & Clavelle, J. T. (2021). Transforming shared governance: Toward professional governance for nursing. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration. 51(4), 206-211 DOI: 10.1097/NNA.0000000000000999