[Nurses' perceptions of the justice in performance appraisal: a qualitative study]

Introduction: Performance appraisal is an important responsibility of health care system and increases employee's morale and productivity. The aim of this study is to explore nurses' perceptions of justice in Performance appraisal

Method: This qualitative study was conducted in Tehran in year 2012. Nurses were selected purposively from an educational hospital of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. For data gathering, 5 focus group sessions, involving 10 to 7 nurses at each session, were held by using semi-structured interview and continued until the data reaches saturation. Data were analyzed using framework analysis

Results: Four major themes and 14 subthemes were emerged from the analysis of textual data. These themes were organizational context [discrepancies nursing standards and nursing duties, lack of appropriate incentives for nurses, the lack of an appropriate institutional framework, lack of a clear nursing job description, and the gap between educational theory and practice], performance appraisal structure [inefficient systems of laws and regulations introduction, subjective appraisal, overall appraisal form, discontinuation in appraisal], performance appraisal process [lack of strict supervision of the authorities, unfair appraisal, and lack of respect for the persons dignity] and performance appraisal results [lack of proper feedback and little attention to meritocratic]

Conclusion: Participants believed nurse performance appraisal system facing with multiple problems that are affected justice in performance appraisal. It seems to achieve the ultimate goal of performance appraisal, improved quality of patient care, change and revision is necessary

[Nurses' views about factors affecting the professional roles]

The mission of professional nursing is that guarantee health promotion and recovery of patients. Several changes have occurred in the health care system and professional standards and nurses, as professionals, should pay attention to the changes and identify factors affecting their professional roles. The aim of this study was to clarify the nurse's viewpoint on factors affecting the professional roles. In this qualitative research, 7 nurses in various hospitals of Tehran were selected by purposeful sampling and sampling continued data saturation. Semistructured interviews were used for data collection. All interviews were recorded and hand written and using the constant comparative method and content analysis were analyzed. Ability to verify data, hand-written overview of the method was used with participants and partners. Data analysis showed that six components; cultural characteristics - beliefs of patients and his family, nurses' job security, management and leadership, gap between the theories -practice, motivational factors of work environment and nurses' personal beliefs were introduced as factors affecting the nurses' professional role. The results of this study showed that some factors affecting the nurses' professional roles that may be facilitated or inhibited the professional roles performance, and this requires a detailed understanding of the factors facilitating and hindering the nurse's professional role and planning to achieve health promotion goal

[Assessment on knowledge sources used in nursing practice]

Introduction: Development and application of nursing knowledge is necessary to provide a safe and high quality of patient care. The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge sources used in nursing practice

Methods and Materials: In this descriptive study, 100 nurses from different wards of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services educational hospitals were selected and completed a 2- parts knowledge sources questionnaire including demographic [6 questions] and knowledge sources questions [16 questions]. Content validity and test- retest [0.8] methods were used for measuring validity and reliability of the questionnaire respectively. Descriptive statistics and correlation tests were used for analysis of data by SPSS [v.14] software

Findings: The results showed that most important knowledge sources used in nursing practice were personal experience of nursing patients/clients [39%], what has worked for years and information that learned in nursing school [35%]. The least important knowledge source used in nursing practice was articles published in nursing journals [2%]

Conclusion: Due to increase of knowledge and research in nursing, use of new knowledge, in nursing practice is necessary. This will reduce gap between theory and practice and also improve quality of patient care