Nurse Staffing Norm in Iran Hospitals: What Features Should be Included for Success?

Nurses' perceptions of critically ill patients' eye care: a qualitative study in Iran

BACKGROUND

Despite the high prevalence of ocular complications in patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), eye care, as an important component of the care plan, has not received much attention from nurses. To improve the quality of eye care, the challenges and concerns of ICU nurses should be studied deeply. Thus, the present study aimed at exploring the challenges faced by ICU nurses in taking care of patients admitted to the ICU.

METHODS

The present conventional qualitative content analysis study was carried out on 11 nurses and 3 head nurses selected purposefully by observing the maximum variation. The data were collected through face-to-face, in-depth, and semi-structured interviews. All data were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the conventional content analysis method proposed by Graneheim and Lundman (Nurse Educ Today 24:105-12, 2004). The Max Q Data software 2020 was run to record the interviews and extract codes from the transcriptions.

RESULTS

The participants' mean age was 37.14 ± 6.41 years and their average work experience in ICU was 10.29 ± 7.63 years. The core category that emerged from data analysis was "the lack of an evidence-based approach", which was subdivided into five categories: "education, the missing link", "nurses' inadequate professional competence", "unsafe nursing care", "organizational requirements", and "difficulty in eye care evaluation".

CONCLUSION

Evidence-based practice plays a minor role in the field of eye care in Iran, despite its critical importance. Thus, the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran is recommended to adapt the clinical guidelines so that more attention is paid to this field.

The relationship between the emergency nurses' sleep quality and the sleep quality of their spouses: A cross‐sectional descriptive‐analytical study

Background and Aims

Due to the heavy working shifts, emergency nurses may have to sleep at unusual times of the day, affecting their spouse's sleep. This study proposed to detect the relationship between the woman emergency nurse's sleep quality and the sleep quality of their spouses.

Methods

This cross‐sectional descriptive‐analytical study has lasted for 4 months since June 21, 2020. The study population was all women nurses working at a hospital emergency department. The data was collected by a demographic questionnaire and Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI) for nurses and their spouses. The data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results

The prevalence of sleep quality disorder among female emergency department nurses and their husbands was 82.7% and 80.6%, respectively. The mean sleep quality score of female nurses and their husbands was 8.46 ± 4.43 and 6.50 ± 2.52, respectively. A strong and positive correlation was found between the PSQI score of female nurses and their husbands (p < 0.001). The regression model showed that increasing the body mass index (BMI) of female emergency nurses can decrease their sleep quality. However, increasing the BMI of female emergency nurses' spouses and their work experience in the emergency department can improve their sleep quality.

Conclusion

The sleep quality of female emergency department nurses was directly correlated with their husbands' sleep quality. Therefore, the sleep quality of nurses working in the emergency departments and their spouses should be examined periodically.

Insecure Employment Contracts during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Need for Participation in Policy Making

Job security influences the ability of nurses to provide high-quality nursing care. The Iranian health system has always faced nursing shortages, and the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened this situation. Although nurses have been labelled 'heroes' across the globe, many of them have been hired using insecure employment contracts. This commentary aims to describe issues surrounding job contracts for Iranian nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses how the current situation can be improved. Iranian nurses are at the frontline of the fight against COVID-19 and need to receive better support in terms of job security and dignity. They should participate more in policymaking activities to improve their job condition and prevent the development and implementation of the short-term and insecure job contracts that lead to job insecurity.

Challenges of human resources management in nursing in Iran: A qualitative content analysis

Aim

Health service providers are appreciated among the vital components in a society wherein nurses are also considered as the main human resources. Thus, examining the existing challenges in managing these human resources through taking correct measures can contribute to identifying the priorities and consequently influence the quality of services provided. This study aims to investigate the challenges of human resources management in nursing from the perspective of professionals in Iran.

Design

Qualitative content analyses.

Methods

Present study is carried out using purposive sampling conducted on 12 nurses involved in different professional nursing positions. To this end, the participants' perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes were collected via two focus group sessions. Data were collected during Febuary and March 2018.

Results

From the perspective of the professionals, the challenges could be observed in a wide variety of human resources management dimensions in nursing such as job analysis, recruitment, as well as development and retention of workforce.

Identifying the effective factors on the transition to the third-generation university: A qualitative study

BACKGROUND

Iranian universities optimistically can be regarded as second-generation research-centered universities which train people who can only fill the predefined occupational gaps. These universities are doing very little to become third-generation universities. It seems that medical science universities have a huge capacity to create and expand entrepreneurship in health care because of their diverse activities in health services. The present study aimed to investigate the effective factors affecting the Iranian medical universities transition to third-generation universities.

METHODS

The present study is a qualitative study which was carried out in Kerman University of Medical Sciences. The study population was the faculty members of Kerman University of Medical Sciences who had been selected by purposeful sampling method. For this purpose, 13 faculty members of Kerman University of Medical Sciences who were interested in the topic were interviewed. To collect data, a number of general questions were asked from the participants to clarify specific topics. The interviews lasted between 20 and 45 min. The descriptive phenomenology method was used for data analysis based on the Colaizzi's seven steps.

RESULTS

In the present study, five main themes include; reforming the bureaucracy, paying attention to the empowerment of university personnel, improving the status of graduates, reviewing the status of education and research, and connecting with the industry and making a profit were identified.

CONCLUSION

We can use strategies such as reduction of bureaucracy, privatization, reduction of management pyramid, culture building, creation of appropriate reward system, and taking a role model from successful people.

An investigation on workload indicator of staffing need: A scoping review

The purpose of this scoping review was to survey the most recent (10 years) estimating of needed human resource in health-care organization by Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) method literature to understand themes and research avenues that may be helpful and beneficial to estimating of needed staff in health-care organizations. Our search strategy was based on using search engines such as Medline, Google Scholar, Scopus, and PubMed as well publications such as Elsevier, Emerald, ProQuest, and Springer. Finally, 31 articles extract for scoping review. Scoping review findings emerge in four key points that mentioned as follow: Service delivery time, Geographical features, Workload, and Supply and Demand. Furthermore, the strengths and weakness of WISN extracted from literature. As conclusion, the WISN method is applicable to any health-care organization, and of course, in smaller institutions, it can be done more quickly and efficiently. Where shortages of staff were identified using WISN, and if increasing the number of employees was impossible, we could use the task shifting. WISN can be used to calculate the required human resources for future models based on some assumptions such as the results of staff training, demographic changes, and disease profiles and staff turnover.

The design of an estimation norm to assess nurses required for educational and non-educational hospitals using workload indicators of staffing need in Iran

BACKGROUND

One of the effective strategies in the fair distribution of human resources is the use of estimation norm of human workforce. A norm is a coefficient or an indicator for estimating the required human resources in an organization. Due to the changes in the available working hours of nurses in recent years and to use of a standard method, the Iranian Ministry of Health decided to update nursing estimation norm in hospitals in 2014-2015. This study aimed to design a nurse-required estimation norm for educational and non-educational hospitals based on the workload indicator in Iran.

METHODS

This was a descriptive cross-sectional study, carried out from December 2015 to November 2016 in 49 wards in 12 educational and 17 non-educational hospitals in Mashhad, Iran. The wards and hospitals who had the best performance in nursing care quality indicators were selected. Focus group, work study, consensus, interview, and reviewing documents, staff and patient records, and the calculations of modified Workload Indicators of Staffing Needs (WISN) were used to collect the data.

RESULTS

Patient care, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and transfer out of the hospital were identified as the main activities of holding focus groups. Interviews and reviewing documents led to the identification of 10 factors associated with nurses' available working time. In both educational and non-educational hospitals, the annual working time of all nurses except nurses working in the burn and psychiatric, burn ICU, and pediatric psychiatry wards, which was 1302 h per year, was 1411 h per year. The calculations of the modified WISN method showed that the lowest norm in educational hospitals was for psychiatric, eye surgery, and dermatology wards (0.53) and in non-educational hospitals was for ENT ward (0.57). The highest norm in educational and non-educational hospitals was for burn ICU (3.95) and general ICU (3.07) wards, respectively.

CONCLUSION

The nursing estimation norm in different wards of the hospital varies, considering that the time available to nurses and their workload in different wards and hospitals are different, and each ward has its special norm therefore, a single norm for all wards and hospitals cannot be used for a fair distribution of nurses.

Reaching for the stars: Iranian nurses' perceptions of career success

AIM

The aim was to explore nurses' perceptions of career success.

INTRODUCTION

Career success is a concept which leads to improving professional behaviours. Research that focused on conceptualizing career success found it to be a complex, value-driven construct likely to be perceived differently across work and cultural contexts. It is not yet clear what constitutes career success, and how it is perceived by nurses in Iran. More comprehensive exploration of this concept in nursing is needed, so research and policymaking can advance in informed, data-driven manner.

METHOD

This is a qualitative descriptive study. The setting was teaching hospitals of Iran. Twenty-seven nurses participated in face-to-face interviews, and six field notes were collected. Data were analysed using conventional content analysis.

FINDINGS

Analyses identified five themes of career success: providing high-quality care, being exemplary employee, embarking on career growth, having positive personal attributes and being internally satisfied.

CONCLUSION

Findings confirmed that career success in Iranian nurses was a multidimensional concept that represented five internally and externally driven dimensions set within its cultural and religious context. Policymakers and clinical educators can now plan interventions aimed at fostering career success in nursing staff.

IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION, NURSING AND HEALTH POLICIES

Future nurses could use these finding to reflect on their developed attributes throughout their studies and clinical placements and adjust their career preparation and learning to bridge any identified gaps. Organizational values and intervention for nursing staff could also be redesigned to align with the aspects of career success.