ABSTRACT
Background: Time management skills are a determining factor in a manager's success. These skills comprise a wide range of activities including planning, scoping, analyzing spent time, monitoring, organizing, scheduling, and prioritizing. This study investigated the relationship between the personal and organizational time management skills of managers at Zabol Medical Sciences University
Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted in 2015. The study's statistical population included all managers of hospitals and centers covered by Zabol Medical Sciences University. A total of 75 managers were selected for participation using the simple random sampling method, and the response rate was 93%. Data was gathered using a two-part questionnaire composed by the researcher. The first part of the questionnaire measured personal time management skills, and the second part measured the organizational skill of time management and six dimensions of it
Results: The findings showed that even though the relationship between interpersonal skills and organizational skills of time management is a positive one with a 0.45 correlation coefficient, the mean interpersonal and organizational skills of time management scores of managers, both male and female, undergraduate and high school level, had no significant statistical differences
Conclusion: Time management is one principle of management; it requires special organizational and individual skills and plays an important role in improving leadership and organizational productivity. Thus, it is essential that all centers and organizations of a country, especially educational and health centers, put considerable focus on this issue
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to estimate the cost of smear-positive drug-susceptible pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) treatment of the patients in the Azadshahr district, Golestan Province, Iran. METHODS: In this retrospective study, all new smear positive pulmonary TB patients who had been registered at the district’s health network between April, 2013 and December, 2015 and had successfully completed their treatment were entered into the study (45 patients). Treatment costs were estimated from the provider’s perspective using an activity-based costing (ABC) method. RESULTS: The cost of treating a new smear-positive pulmonary TB patient was US dollar (USD) 1,409.00 (Iranian Rial, 39,438,260), which can be divided into direct and indirect costs (USD 1,226.00 [87%] and USD 183.00 [13%], respectively). The highest cost (58.1%) was related to care and management of TB patients (including 46.1% human resources costs and 12% directly-observed treatment, short course implementation) and then respectively related to hospitalization (12.1%), supportive activity centers (11.4%), transportation (6.5%), medicines (5.3%), and laboratory tests and radiography (3.2%). CONCLUSION: Using disease-specific cost studies can help the healthcare system management to have correct insight into the financial burden created by the disease. This can subsequently be used in prioritization, planning, operational budgeting, economic evaluation of programs, interventions, and ultimately in disease management.