Establishing the standards of control in nursing services management

ABSTRACT

Perhaps it could be claimed that performing task in organization would not be successful, unless the necessary controls have been provided. Management system needs control to be informed about the methods of goal achievement and performing operations, thereby, gaining the ability for tracking, testing and reforming methods. In any specialty, in order to consider these activities equally and scientifically, the responsible establish professional standards in the form of direction and framework and declare them to enforcers. With due attention to the importance of control, especially in health systems management and with view to the fact that there is no standard in this field, the current study was designed with the aim of compiling standards for control accreditation in nursing management in Iran. This is a triangulation research conducted from 2004 to 2006. The sample size was 15 in Delphi stage and total of 50 nursing management experts [from Iranian medical sciences universities] in stage of survey. The sampling was target based. At first, a pilot study was conducted in Isfahan and Shiraz by an open questionnaire, and then the main research was conducted in three phases. In the first stage, international standards of control for nursing services management were collected. In the second stage, a semi-structured questionnaire was developed from perspectives of 15 professional nurse managers. The suggestions were collected and the researchers reached a consensus of 70% in the third stage. Then, the researchers held a national survey among 50 nursing management experts in Iran. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and distribution frequency and eventually control of nursing services management standards in Iran were extracted. Thirty five standards in area of control was established. The results show that these standards had more than 90 percent of acceptability. These standards together with the standard of nursing units can develop quality, so, it is suggested that these standards can be utilized by ministry of health and medical education to control credit rating of nursing units, in order to identify the lacks and shortages