The Relationship of Participation in Decision Making through a Shared Governance Model to Nurses' Work Satisfaction

Purpose:
To assess the relationship between nurses' participation in the decision making processes as recommended by the shared governance model and the level of work satisfaction among cardiovascular nurses working in a tertiary hospital in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Background/Significance:
Shared governance has been proposed as a framework that provides nurses with both the structure and the mechanism for having increased decision making authority. Participation in the decision making process has been cited as a main reason for satisfaction in nursing.

Methods:
A descriptive, correlational design was used to investigate the level of work satisfaction of a non-random, convenience sample that consisted of 168 nurses who had worked in the cardiovascular department for more than two years. The participants completed the survey instrument which was the Index of Work Satisfaction Part-B (IWS-Part B).

Results:
The response rate was 86.3% (n: 145). 75.9% of respondents were female nurses, 57.9% had an age range between 31-40 years, 93.8% had worked in the nursing profession for more than five years, and 62.8% had Bachelor degree. Respondents were overall moderately satisfied (Index of Work Satisfaction Part-B: 181.10). They were moderately satisfied with autonomy, interaction, and professional status variables, while they were moderately unsatisfied with decision making, tasks, and pay variables. Work satisfaction had the highest positive and significant correlation with decision making variable (r: 0.845, p: 0.000).

Conclusions and Implications for Practice:
Respondents were moderately satisfied. The involvement in the shared governance to enhance nurses' level of work satisfaction should consider other contributing factors such as the duration of their participation, nurses' workload, and reimbursements they receive.