To explicit the difference by comparing the perception to necessity of management skills for nurse managers between top managers and the nurse manager.
Methods:
Quantitative approach was demonstrated. Anonymous questionnaires were distributed towards the top manager and the manager of nursing division working at all healthcare facilities in Osaka prefecture. The contents of questionnaire were 1) the facility’s attributes: the number of beds and the type of organization, 2) the top manager’s attributes: the age and the gender, the degree of cooperation between the top manager and the nurse manager(5 degree), 3) the nurse manager’s attributes: the age and the gender, the academic status, the certification status, the degree of cooperation between the top manager and the nurse manager (5degree), 4) in terms of 53 items of AONE nurse manager competency instrument(NMCI)(Chase,2010), the top managers and the nurse managers were asked how is necessity for nurse managers with 5-Likert scale, such as very important=5, important=4, fair= 3, not so important=2, not important at all=1. The lists of NMCI were categorized to 7, such as 1) Financial Management (FM), 2) Human Resource Management (HRM), 3) Performance Improvement (PI), 4) Foundational Thinking Skills (FT), 5) Technology (T), 6) Strategic Management (SM), 7) Clinical Practice Knowledge and Skills (CP). As the compliance to ethical considerations, study approval was obtained from review board of Osaka Nursing Association.
Results:
Statistical analysis was conducted. As the descriptive statistics, the number of completed couple of response was 72, while the total number of distribution was 955. Almost of respondents of top managers percept the cooperative degree was more than 4(good), on the contrary, perception of nurse managers was divided into two groups. As the perception gap between the top manager and the nurse manager, there was a correlational relationship with CP only (p<.05). Nurse managers recognized more necessary to HRM, PI, FT, RT, SM than top managers. As for the characteristics of facility, the size of hospital was significantly different with FM, HRM, FT, T, and SM of nurse managers’ perceptions by analysis of variance(p<.001～.05). The organization type was also significantly different with FM, PI, FT, T and SM of nurse managers by Mann-Whitney U test (p<.01～.001). As for the characteristics of nurse managers, to be a certified nurse administrator or not was significantly different with FT of nurse managers’ perceptions by Mann-Whitney U test (p<.05).
Conclusion:
As the typical similarity between top managers and nurse managers, the importance of clinical knowledge and skills was depicted. There was no significant difference with the importance of NMCI categories in terms of the age, the size, the type of organization among top managers. Meanwhile, nurse managers recognized the importance of some NMCI categories compared to top managers. These categories were related to essential management skills. Perception of the degree of cooperation between top managers and nurse managers divided into two groups. It is implied the difference of degree of cooperation is the key of promoting nursing management skills.