Background: There is an acute shortage of nurses worldwide including Iran. Quality of work life is important for nurses as it affects the safety and quality of care provided for patients as well as organizational factors. The aim of this study was to describe the status of quality of work life and to explore its predictors among nurses in Iran. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 2391 nurses in 85 Iranian public hospitals, selected through the convenience sampling. Data were collected using demographic information and the quality of work life questionnaires. Results: The mean score for total quality of work life was 2.58, indicating a low level of self-reported quality of work life, with 69.3% of nurses dissatisfied with their work life. The major influencing factors were inadequate and unfair payment, lack of solving staff problems by organization and poor management support, job insecurity, high job stress, unfair promotion policies, and inadequate involvement in the decision-making. Significant predictors in the multivariate analysis for lower quality of work life were male gender, being single, older age, having lower educational levels, and working in teaching hospitals. Conclusion: The quality of nursing work life was at a low level and needs improvement interventions. The predictors identified allow for more targeted interventions. Nursing managers and policymakers should develop and implement successful strategies appropriately to improve the quality of work life. This includes the payments, organizational and managerial support, job security, fair promotion policies, and measures to reduce job stress.

Background: Outsourcing is a method and tool for delivering services to increase effectiveness and efficiency. Regarding the outsourcing policies, identifying experiences and outsourcing records is essential. In this regard, the present study aimed at examining the status and experience of outsourcing policy in the health sector as a review study. Methods: The present systematic review was carried out by searching Persian language articles from sources such as Magiran, SID, Hospital and Medical Education Magazines, Handouts, and Announcements and English language articles from sources indexed in Google scholar, PubMed, Scopus databases. The authors search for English and Persian language articles from 2000 until 2018. The following keywords were used in the search outsourcing, private sector, purchasing, contracting, public-private participation. A total of 25 articles were entered in the final analysis according to the inclusion criteria. Results: Based on the results, outsourcing improves the quality, satisfaction of patients, and efficacy in most cases. The findings also suggested that outsourcing policies needed to be prescriptive and should be taken into consideration. Conclusion: Hospitals should note that in the case of assigning a unit and transferring it to other parts not related to their expertise, it is not really possible to accept the transfer's general and absolute success in improving efficiency and effectiveness and reducing costs. The outsourcing policies need to relevant assumptions and requirements to succeed.