Effectiveness of Nursing Management Educational Program upon Head Nurses Knowledge Regarding Staff Management

Abstract

Background: Globally, the role of the unit nurse manager has evolved exponentially over the past severaldecades from that of clinical ward sister, overseeing mainly patient care on a single unit, to that of nursemanager with a much wider scope of practice. Unit operations including budget, recruitment and retention,staff development, quality and evidence-based practice for patient outcomes. Prior to that era, “ward chargenurses” were responsible for only clinical patient care on their single unit, and were expected to performpatient care (Bailey, 2014).Objectives: Implement the nursing management education program for the study group.Methodology: A quasi-experimental design is carried out throughout the present study with the applicationof test-retest approach for the study and control groups from March 24th 2019 to Feb 19th 2020.Settings of the Study: This study was conducted at the nursing units of Al-Najaf AL-Ashraf City Hospitalswhich include (Al-Sadr Medical City, Al-Hakeem General Hospital and Al-Zahra Teaching Hospital, theyrepresented AL-Najaf AL-Ashraf city).Result: Showed that the study group participants had benefits from the implementation of nursingmanagement education program.Conclusions: The program considered an effective mean for the improvement of the head nurse’s knowledge.Recommendations: Head nurses should have the required knowledge about wards management regardingstaff management. And nursing management education program is an important tool for the development ofhead nurses’ skills. Accordingly, head nurses need to be encouraged to participate in nursing managementeducation program focused on staff management. Finally, the study proved that there is an essential needfor collaboration between the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research with Ministry of Healthand Environment to improve the nursing management courses as a part of curriculum in nursing institutesand universities.