ABSTRACT
Introduction: skilled nurses are needed to achieve health promotion strategies, so operation and assessment via staff development program is essential
Objective: the purpose of this study was to evaluate staff development program through west Mazandaran hospital nurses and its relationship with the level of their professional competency
Methods: this study was descriptive - correlations in 205 nurses from general ward who were selected by cluster sampling. Data was collected by two questionnaires for competency level and staff development programs. Face and content validity was approved and reliability of the instrument was assessed by the internal consistency. Analysis of variance and chi-square tests were used to analyze data
Results: the majority of samples reported their competent level as ideal [75/6%], and the effectiveness of the program estimated as average [80/5%]. variance analysis of data showed there are no significant difference in the mean scores of survey instrument staff development, among the nurses with varying levels of competence [p =0/4, df =2]
Conclusion: organizations spend enormous amounts of money to improve development programs. If these programs loss their effectiveness, it is time consuming and will damage the economy. These results could be useful for nursing organization and executives