The nursing profession and its relationship with hospital managers

Abstract

This paper describes the relationship between the professional nursing and managerial imperatives in health care and explains some of the ways the managerial culture affects the working environment of professional nurses. It goes on to highlight some of the professional developments of the last 17 years and describes how these could augment the difference in imperatives. Finally it suggests ways in which the nursing profession might develop to maintain its unique contribution to health care, whilst embracing the managerial domain. This is necessary to ensure that professional nursing is nurtured and not overwhelmed by workloads and empirical assessments of nursing outputs.

The development of nurses as managers: the prevalence of the self-development route

“…Nurses practising in institutional settings have always performed managerial functions, but only in recent years have some considered that these functions conflict with their professional responsibilities. This dilemma is being overtaken by a growing organizational imperative for the ward manager role to incorporate general management and therefore a greater concern for the use of human and financial resources whilst retaining the clinical aspects of professional nursing work which is more ‘people‐focused’ ( Rickard 1996). To develop nurses as general managers, this research examined the styles of management development espoused by senior nurse managers whose decision‐making set the organizational tone for the development opportunities offered to ward managers.…”