Dynamics in the Management Expectations of the Nurse Managers - Research Proposal Example

Introduction Executive summary The nursing managers happen to be some of the most important staff working in hospitals or any other health care premises. Most of the work done by the nursing manager’s centers around administration. Specifically, in any health center where the nursing managers can be found, their work involves planning for most of the activities that the nurse assistants who work under them engage in and other institutional activities of importance; staffing, especially of the assistant nurses; organizing for important functions within the health institutions; directing and leading other nurses in their role of taking care of patients, and other activities of importance that the institution might be engaged in; and controlling all activities of the nurses including evaluation of their performance in the nursing work as well as performance in departmental subunits. Staffing, as one of the roles of the nursing managers, includes the acquisition of staff on full time and/or part time nursing assistants who act as the ‘eyes and ears of the registered nurses/ nurse managers’. The health institutions can decide to take on board a nurse manager to take on the role of taking charge of the full time nursing assistants and have another taking charge of the part time nursing assistants. At the same time, a nurse manager might be in charge of both the full time and the part time nursing assistants. In both cases, dealing with either category of the nursing assistants has its own challenges which must be tackled differently. This business research report will undertake to explain the differences in the management and performance skills for nurse managers dealing with the full time nursing assistants and those dealing with the part time nursing assistants. The areas that will be addressed by this business report include areas where nursing management is needed; the skills needed for the profession; the differences in management that results from nursing managers taking on either part time or fulltime assistant nurses; the differences in skills required in dealing with either part time or fulltime nursing assistants; and the nature of work performed by the nursing managers. The results yielded by the study conducted included; the existence of differences in management roles as well as skills in managing fulltime and part time nursing assistants; the vast health related field in which the nursing management career has importance and is utilized; and the critical worked performed by the nurse managers which resonates around administration issues as well as areas of communication. Problem statement and significance of the study The following business research report is an in depth capture of the differences in management and skills requirements for the nurse managers who manage either the part time or full time nurse assistants. Nurse Managers do adopt different managerial skills when dealing with either of the two groups of the nurse assistants in order to get them to perform at all levels of their work. Since they are charged with the role of organizing for the daily activities and the control of the activities expected of the nursing assistants, the nurse managers must come up with ways of meeting this requirement whether the nurse assistants are full or part time. The styles and skills adopted when managing the fulltime nurse assistants is different from that adopted when managing part time nursing assistants since, though these categories perform similar works, the time spent by the two groups of the nurse assistants with their patients is markedly different (Mathis and Harold 2004p444). This means that the nurse managers have to assign more than one assistant to a single long term patient to ensure that patients are afforded proper care. The report will indicate how the study has managed to bring out the differential input realized by the nurse managers dealing with different categories of the nurse assistants in terms of the time allocations. Literature review Chichin R Eileen et al (2000) has captured the ethical standard relevant for the nurse managers in their daily practice of management and administrative roles. The importance of the approach adopted lies in the knowledge building and structuring capability it aims to build in the nurse managers. This approach fosters providence of the intervention of education and support of the nurse managers in their work so that the best possible practices are brought into the limelight. Chichin R Eileen et al (2000) used the interview, survey and observational research methodologies to get the informative compilation of the information found in the book. The book has also touched on the role of the nurse managers in ensuring that patients are afforded the best care possible through mobilizing appropriate staff for the task wherever they are found- at home; in the medical care institutions; and the hospital premises. Their impact on the various categories of patients in terms of age has also been highlighted (Chichin E R et al. 2000). The significance of the book to this study lies in its identification of the various institutions that house the patients and where, in effect, the nurse managers offer their services. The book has also looked deeply into the work performed by the nurse managers in various contexts and their role in all natures of health cases. Barbara Acello (2001) has captured the requirements for the entry into the nursing management position by detailing the requirements in the training or skill imparting exercise. She has captured the degree of relevance of training needed for the position as well as the biological attributes required of the nurse managers. The book has utilized the experimentation approach in information gathering by setting out measurable objectives and the identification of the interventions necessary for capturing residential care. The approach has also tackled the area of use of facilities, including technology, and the amount of output rendered by their use. Of the greatest concern the book has to the roles of the nurse managers, is the identification of the problematic health areas within the institutional, social, and even national and at times international level, and the provision of the restorative care. The book has undertaken to report, with great insistence, on the role of the patients or residents in restoration of health. The role of the patients is important in communicating about the areas in which the nurse managers must improve on. They also challenge the role of the nurse managers through inventing or developing greater challenges to the administrative and other roles required of the nurse managers. The significance of this book to the study lies with the identification of the legal, personal, as well as the skilful requirements for entry in to the profession. It has also detailed the possible techniques that could be applied on the promotion of resident involvement. The role of the restorative care will help the study to build on the point of focus (Acello B 2001). Hegner R Barbara and Caldwell Esther (2003) have offered learner preparation information for the development of the nursing profession as a whole. The whole array of the necessary educational theory and practical skills necessary for the development of the profession are explained in the book while important information relating to the trends of the profession have been identified too. At the same time, the authors have noted and put down a total of 160 step by step procedures towards the development of the nursing profession (Hegner and Caldwell 2003). The book is important to the study because it has identified a number of the premises where the nurse managers practice their health related expertise. It has added to the wealth of the study a contemporary trend in which the nursing profession keeps adopting as with the passing on of time. It provides the study with the information identified in the acquisition of the profession. Zimmermann Polly G’s (2002) book, titled ‘Nursing management secrets’ has provided much insight in to the study of practical management undertaking of the nurse managers, both of they who work with the part time as well as the fulltime nurse assistants. The information related in the book is of great importance for the nurse managers or the registered nurses. The book has pinpointed the basic areas that a nurse manager should and must concentrate on for greater performance. The book has identified all the areas of professionalism nurse managers need to familiarize themselves with and those in which nurse managers have taken precedence. Some of the areas identified include the relationship held by the nurse managers with the certified nursing assistants. The role of the certified nursing assistants in return is also identified in the book. The approach adopted by the book includes the conceptualization of the areas of importance to nurse managers depicted in prose; an account of experiences, experimentations and the results as well as theorization of the practices of the managerial nature. The book is significant in the study because it provides much literature on the working relationships between the certified nursing assistants and the nurse managers thus putting strength to the necessary relations to be adopted in the said relationships for the sake of performance. The experimentation and the experiences adopted in the book have assisted with the provision of the results of studies that have been used for proving the results of the study in the results section of the business research report. The citation of the experiments and the experiences has also offered a wider perception in the identification of the areas of the nurse managers. The author’s experiences, as identified in the book, were used to form a web of practices that kept on recurring with time. This suggests that the experiences do help the practitioners to identify patterns of evolution of some of experiences they come across and use them for future practices. This has helped with the development of the theme through the input of the role of experiences in the development of memory and performance, such that individuals act in a given way to either get the expected results or avoid the results emanating from an experience (Zimmermann 2002). Binstock H R et al. (2006) has offered a new dimension towards the study of the performance of the nurse managers in their work with either certified nursing assistants or their part time counterparts. The book features the role of age and aging in performance within the context of livelihood. It has developed the notion of aging within a very wide perspective including the perspective adopted in anthropology, economics, sociology, bioethics, political science, epidemiology, and psychology among others. The book offers insights into the dynamics of aging in the contexts of the institutions, the society, time, and the social structure. The book has also highlighted the importance of the style of living to performance and the role of technology, religion, economy, law and social relationships among a wide array of other contexts. The approach adopted by the authors in the information gathering includes the use of a vast collection of knowledge foundations and comparing the resulting information (Kleinman 2003). The significance of the book can be identified in the provision of the wide range of the grounds or areas where the role of performance can be positively founded and their effect on the work of the nurse managers. The indulgence of a wide area of research contributed to the study the notion of wide familiarization with the areas that affect the performance in the various areas of life- nursing included. The many areas looked into by the study have yielded closely related information regarding performance thus acting as a real confirmation of the truth about performance (Binstock et al. 2006). Method The purpose of this study is to identify the differences in management and performance skills between nurse managers who deal with fulltime nurse assistants and those dealing with part time nurse assistants. In relation to this, the following hypotheses have been identified to guide the study; 1. The nurse managers are required in almost all health institutions provided that the health institutions offer services relevant for the nursing management profession. Some of the areas where the nurse managers are required include; hospitals and clinics; nursing homes where the old people require these services; in home healthcare bureaus; in student hospices; and within the ambulatory care centers among many other areas concerned with patient satisfaction. Private Nurses who deal with one or more clients in homes also require knowledge in management as well as the skills necessary for helping members of the family to pool their efforts towards the recuperation of their patients. In special circumstances, single nurses working with several clients simultaneously require the knowledge of setting priorities to have patients recuperate, or at times afford peaceful deaths. In the first hypothesis, the health institutions are acting as the independent variables while the requirement of the nurse managers happen to be the dependent variables because requirement of the nurse managers is dependent on the instituions’ move to offer the services (Kleinman 2003). 2. Nurse Managers must posse’s technical, conceptual and human skills in order to perform their wide array of roles in dealing with the part or fulltime nursing assistants. The nurse managers cannot achieve the best results in their profession unless they cultivate interpersonal, technical, creative, administrative and leadership skills. Creativity extends to skills in adaptation and planning, while the interpersonal skills include social skills, skills in communication as well as coordination skills. The nurse managers must be able to handle crisis well, communicate well with both internal and external experts, be competent in organizational navigation; manage time well; and posses excellent social skills. This set of the tasks expected of the nurse managers validate their acquisition of the above named skills (Mathis and Harold 2004p445). 3. Nurse Managers take on their roles at different levels that are characterized by the roles or functions within the health institutions in which they work. This system of classification has identified three levels in which the nurse managers are found. These include; the supervisory management, middle management and the top management. A number of roles are common to the managerial profession and they include; informational, interpersonal, and decision making roles. In this regard then, nurse managers play different roles depending on their level but nevertheless, all the nurse managers are concerned with leadership, liaison, acting as figureheads, information disseminators, spokespersons, information monitoring, making of decisions in entrepreneurship, allocating resources to various departments, handling issues of disturbances, and negotiating with the external expertise among other roles (Finkler and Graf 2000 p333). 4. The nursing managers apply different managerial and performance skills when dealing with either the fulltime or the part time nursing assistants. There are a number of challenges associated with the working with both categories of the nurse’s assistants. When dealing with the part time nursing assistants, the nurse managers must at all times make the decisions of the personal and technical skills the nursing assistants must have in order to care for particular patients (Willmot 1998). Since it is impossible to assign one assistant for each of the patients, the personal characteristics required of one patient who must have several nursing assistants in his/her service must be perfectly matched to avoid controversies in taking care of the patients. Supervising part time nursing assistants is more involving than supervising the fulltime nursing assistants since part time assistants are much in numbers than the fulltime nursing assistants. The performance skills of the managers working with the part time nursing assistants is equally much higher due to the greater number of challenges associated with the part time nursing assistants. The nursing managers heading the part time nursing assistants develop greater competencies in coordination, supervising, disseminating information, handling disturbances, and monitoring of activities because they must maintain keenness in these areas for good performance within their field of profession. In this regard then, the performance in their interpersonal relations, communication, supervising and crisis management are sharpened a great deal more than their counterparts who deal with the fulltime nursing assistants (Mathis and Harold 2004p443-444). In order to achieve the answers to the above four hypotheses, the study relied on the findings of an extensive research done from a collection of books, handbooks, journals and internet sources offering information on the practices of the nurse managers; those with the relevant information of the legal, personality and educational background needed to pursue the profession; and those which relate time factor to the building of perfectionism in performance in all areas of professionalism which I then applied to the role played by nurse managers (Cournoyer 2008p 124) The plan for execution of the research included an internet research to identify the possible sources of information to use in research- books that dealt with the professional work in which the nurse managers engage in, their personality, skills/educational and legal requirements of the certified nurse managers and the premises in which they are found. Identification of the sources of information was then followed by actual finding of the relevant information from the library and the internet site from which I then deduced the information needed for carrying out the research. Identification of the information required was then followed by the analysis of the information, sorting into the categories of; the requirements of the profession; the practice of the profession; and the areas in which the knowledge and skills of the profession are applied. The initials IV are representations of the words independent variable(s) while DV stands for dependent variable(s). An independent variable refers to a factor or thing that is capable of being manipulated by the experimenting person(s) while a dependent variable is that factor that can be affected by the independent variable or the response received. Dependent variables are measurable. An independent variable is the supposed cause while the dependent variable amounts to the supposed effect. The identification of the validity of the results from the sources was weighed by checking the documentation of the similarity of the results of similar information from all the various sources of the information. This means that I counter checked whether the results of the information found in the different sources of information was similar in all sources of information. The similarity of the results of similar experimentations or claims over the wide range of information was assumed to mean that it was highly likely that the information was true. The contradiction of results obtained from similar experimentations from the different sources of information meant that the credibility of the information was questionable (Chichin E R et al. 2000). The limitation of the study drew from the inability to get some recommended online material. Most of the online books identified from the internet research had most of the relevant material for the research excluded from the preview. Another limitation to the collection of the information from the study included lack of the most relevant materials to conduct the research since some of the best books that were recommended for the conduct of the research were missing from the library. Time limitation for conducting the research was another limitation for getting a huge amount of material to thoroughly conduct the research. Threats to the validity of the information, on the other hand, drew from the lack of a practical way of making the necessary experimentation in order to duplicate the results of the experiments identified from the various sources of the information of the research. I had to rely on the information presented from the sources of information as true from matching the results of similar experiments (Zimmermann 2002). Analysis The following hypotheses were identified for the experiment; 1. The nurse managers are required in almost all health institutions provided that the health institutions offer services relevant for the nursing management profession. 2. Nurse Managers must posses technical, conceptual and human skills in order to perform their wide array of roles in dealing with the part or fulltime nursing assistants. 3. Nurse managers take on their roles at different levels that are characterized by the roles or functions within the health institutions in which they work. 4. The nursing managers apply different managerial and performance skills when dealing with either the fulltime or the part time nursing assistants. To find out whether the information related was right or not, statistical tests were run on my data and they included matching of the results of the tests or experimentation from the different sources of the information. This meant that the information retrieved from one of the sources, for example the journals, had to be counterchecked for validity by matching it with information derived from a different source, for example the internet for similarity. The study made the assumption that, matching of the information drawn from two or more different sources meant that the results were valid, and that, if the results of information drawn from the different sources failed to match, then the results were not valid (Acello 2000). Discussion From the application of the analytical tool, it can be, in response to the first hypothesis, be concluded that the hypothesis is true, meaning that nurse managers are indeed required in almost all health institutions that provide a chance for the involvement of the nurse managers. This deduction was made from the results of the study that yielded the areas where nursing management is required. The second hypothesis is also true because technical, humanistic and conceptual skills are requirements for performing in the nursing management career. These results were drawn from the comparison of the career requirements of the nurse managers from the different sources of information that I was working with. Internet sources yielded the same information as the results of from the books. The third hypothesis is equally true; nurse managers do take on vast set of activities within their department as was yielded from the study. All the information sources that were indicating the roles of the nurse managers displayed a very wide area of operation by this group of professionals. The deduction was also attributed to the nature of work of the nurse managers within health institutions as yielded by the study. The study showed that their work ranges from administrative to recuperative whenever necessary. The fourth hypothesis is equally true as the study yielded. Managers do apply differential skills in management and performance whenever they deal with the nursing assistants who are either part time or fulltime staff of the health institutions. From the documented material regarding experiences of some nurse managers, and from various experiments depicting the same nurse managers as the actors in the two scenarios, and others depicting different nurse managers in the two different scenarios, it can be correctly justified that the management as well as the performance skills differ when dealing with the two categories of the nurses’ assistants. Conclusion The report above has been an eye opener to a number of dynamics in the management expectations of the nurse managers and how their duties and roles to the part and fulltime nursing assistants affect their performance. A number of factors work together to make possible a higher quality performance by the practitioners; time, professionalism, among other things. References Acello B (2000) Restorative Care, Basics for Certified Nursing Assistants Cengage Learning Binstock R H et al (2006) Handbook of aging and the communal sciences, Academic Press Chichin E R et al. (2000) End-of-life morals and the nursing assistant University of Michigan Cournoyer C P (2008) Nurse manager & the law Aspen Publishers p124 Finkler S A & Graf C M (2000) Budgeting ideas for nurse managers Elsevier Health Sciences, p333 Hegner R B & Caldwell E (2003) Nursing Assistant, A Nursing Process Advancement Cengage Learning Kleinman C S (2003) Leadership roles; education and competencies for nurse managers, as retried from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14501561 at 5.02 am in June 23, 2009 Mathis R L & Harold J (2004) Human Resource Management Thomson/South-western p 512 Swansburg R C (2003) Management and guidance for nurse managers, Jones & Bartlett Publishers pp443-448 Willmot M (1998) The new ward manager; changing role- an evaluation. As retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9725741 at 4.00am, on June 23, 2009 Zimmermann G P (2002) Nursing management secrets Elsevier Health Sciences Read More