Making a meaningful impact on health requires compassion, dedication, continuous learning, teamwork and collaboration. At Sentara, we also recognize that in valuing the professional and personal well-being of our nurses, we build a stronger, more supportive workplace for our nurses. And that’s making us healthier from the inside out. These principles unite our nurses across various roles and locations.
Your Perspective Matters
Nurses are the heartbeat of our exceptional team. Our approach empowers nurses to actively participate in decision-making. Our nurses have a stake in shaping their workplace as well as their own career growth; one of the benefits of our focus on supporting and valuing team members. This framework encompasses our nursing mission, vision, values, philosophy, and the essential elements of our Professional Practice Model.
Our Professional Practice Model, represented by the graphic below represents these components.
Professional Practice Models (PPMs) serve as graphical depictions demonstrating how nurses practice, function, interact and develop professionally to provide high-quality care. Sentara Nursing’s PPM describes the foundation of our common nursing practice across our system, providing an inspirational and aspirational vision for nursing care, and helps us to achieve optimal patient outcomes. The mural image of the key practice components illustrates the commitment to collaborate, innovate, and lead while supporting our communities, ongoing learning, and innovation within a healthy work environment leading to exemplary outcomes.
Shared governance is part of Sentara Health Nursing’s Professional Practice Model providing a framework for shared decision-making throughout the health system. Within Sentara Health, shared decision-making is defined as a working model of participatory governance in which nurses make decisions about clinical practice standards, quality improvement, staff and professional development, and nursing research.
Shared decision-making ensures consistency in nursing care and defines nursing’s authority, autonomy, and accountability for patients and families. Nursing maintains a structure of system, divisional, and unit/departmental nursing: forums, councils and committees allowing nursing staff to be involved and/or heard through representation. Shared governance enables evidence-based practice standardization across the system.
Our nursing practice model of professional shared governance is rooted in partnership, equity, accountability and ownership. Shared governance is shared decision-making between patient-side nurses and nurse leaders, creating an environment for active engagement. Open communication and collaboration among all levels of nursing means higher nurse satisfaction and better patient outcomes.
We provide the necessary resources and structure to ensure your voice is heard and you are actively engaged with decision-making, policies and procedures. Our shared decision-making model empowers our nurses to contribute their highly-valued experience to the vital aspects of patient care, clinical standards, quality improvement and nursing research. We know listening to and nurturing our talented nurses promotes positive patient outcomes and creates a workplace culture of positivity and inclusion. Nursing Shared Governance is also a pillar of the American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet® culture.