NURSING MANGERS VIEWS OF THE EDUCATIONAL HOSPITALS OF KERMAN UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES REGARDING BARRIERS OF NURSES ROLES PERFORMANCE

Clinical nurses perform different roles in helping patients. Optimal performance of nurses in their clinical roles have always been encountered with several barriers. Awareness of nursing managers of these barriers has considerable impact on planning strategies to eliminate these barriers and thus improving the quality of nursing services. This study aims to investigate nursing manager’s opinions on barriers of clinical nurse’s role. In a descriptive – analytical study, 101 manager of educational hospitals of Kerman University of Medical Sciences were selected using consensus method. Data collection tool was a questionnaire consisted of demographic characteristics and barriers to nurse’s clinical role. Data analysis was done using SPSS V16, by applying descriptive and inferential statistics. In this study, 85.1% of study subjects were female, 75.2% were married, 93.1 % had bachelor degree, and 64.4% were head nurses. The study participants were aged between 28-51 years (mean 43.01±4.68). They have the work experience of 7-30 years, and their management work experience was between 1-25 years. The averages of manger’s opinion showed that the most important barriers were related to job security (68.9%), motivational factors at work environment (64%), factors related to management and leadership (63.4%), factors related to patient and caregiver’s believes (51.2%), nurse’s personal believes (49.75%) and the gap between theory and practice (47.5%). Weak association was found between gender and job security factors (r=0.3), as well as poor association between nurse’s personal believes and gender (r=0.3), age (r=0.16), and marital status (r=0.5), respectively. There was a weak correlation between marital status and the gap between theory and practice (r=0.23). Other demographic characteristics did not show any correlation with nurse’s role barriers. ANOVA test results showed that there were significant difference between the opinions of the three levels of managers (head nurse, supervisor, and metron) in term of job security, personal believes of patients and caregivers and nurse’s personal believes(p<0.05). The study found that the main barriers to nurse’s clinical role from nursing manager perspective were related to job security, workplace motivational factors and factors related to management and leadership. Therefore it is recommended that by planning actions such as timely payment of wages and benefits, improved working conditions and increased nursing facilities as well as modification or adjustment of their management styles, the managers could remove these barriers and thus improve the quality of nursing services.