Paper
Saturday, 22 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Nursing Leadership Strategies
Exploring Factors Affecting Nursing Involvement in Institution-Based Committee Work via Focus Group Method
Lillian Vitale Pedulla, RN, BSN, MSN, Nursing and Patient Care Services, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA, Marsha E. Fonteyn, RN, PhD, The Phyllis F. Cantor Center Research in Nursing & Patient Care Services, Dana Farber Cancer Center, Boston, MA, USA, and Katherine McDonough, RN, MS, Consulting, The McDonough Group, Norwood, MA, USA.
Learning Objective #1: identify factors that motivate and/or facilitate nursing staff participation in institution-based committees.
Learning Objective #2: delineate factors that impede nursing staff participation in institution-based committee work.
Background:  The Nursing Council at our academic ambulatory oncology center is a shared decision making model that inherently depends upon nursing staff involvement yet their participation in Council committees was often low.  A report from an access database which tracks nursing staff membership in hospital based committees revealed that approximately 10% of the nursing staff was actively involved on committees, while the remaining 90% had minimal or no involvement.  Upon review and discussion, the Nursing Council asked the Evidence Based Practice (EBP) committee to obtain evidence to determine:  What factors motivate nursing staff to become actively involved in committee work? And what factors impede participation? 
Methods:  When a review of published nursing literature provided minimal evidence to answer these questions, the EBP committee decided to hold focus group interviews with the nursing staff that belonged to multiple committees.  A series of open-ended questions were developed by the EBP committee members and were presented for review and comment to the Nursing Council. Two EBP committee members facilitated the focus group sessions and a third took notes during the sessions.  A review of the transcriptions from the audiotapes and notes from the sessions revealed details about the factors that motivate and impede nursing staff participation on committees.
 

Findings:  The motivating factors included:  nurses’ perceived ability to make valuable contributions to a committee; a sense that committee work enhanced professional enrichment and growth; the opportunity to make a difference; and the chance to gain more knowledge about the institution through committee participation.  Among the most frequently cited obstacles to committee participation were time, difficulty in scheduling, and inadequate coverage for the nurses to feel comfortable leaving their patients.   
Implications:   Findings from this exploratory project can be used to develop strategies to increase staff nurse participation on committees to enhance shared decision making.

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