Lebanese Nurse Managers' Selection of CNE offerings: Relevance to their roles and responsibilities

Abstract

Nurse Managers (NMs) are at the frontline for managing patient care services. They have a great responsibility to ensure safety and quality of care, to utilize evidence-based practice and management, and to help in retaining nurses at all levels. Thus, they need to update their knowledge, skills, and personal competencies by engaging in continuing professional education and training based on regulatory and professional bodies. Purpose: The aim of this project is to identify nurse mangers’ selections of CNE offerings and their relevance to their roles and responsibilities. Another aim is to identify sources of information that nurse managers use for updating their management knowledge and skills. Sample: The sample included nurse managers working at hospitals in Lebanon who manage units of services. Nurse Managers from 117 hospitals responded to the study. Excluded were nurses in administrative, clinical, and educational positions. Ethical Considerations: Approval of the proposal was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of the American University of Beirut Faculty of Medicine and other ethics or administrative bodies of the collaborating institutions. The cover letter of the questionnaire served as the consent form. Participants were informed of the voluntary nature of participation and that they can withdraw from the study at any time Instrument: The questionnaire was developed and pilot-tested by the primary investigator of the original study. For the purpose of this project, two questions related to CNE activities attended in the past year and sources of information in addition to the sociodemographic and work-related questions were considered. Method: The design of this secondary data analysis similar to the mother study is quantitative cross-sectional descriptive. Analyses were done using SPSS version 24.0 for Windows. The characteristics of the study sample were summarized using counts and percentages. CNE activities were grouped into 5: Clinical, Leadership and Management, Quality and Patient Safety, Soft Skills, and Others. Associations between the attended CNE sessions categories and background characteristics including gender, income, education, work location, marital status and years as NM were done using Pearson chi-squared test.

Results: Most of the sample were females (84.4%), married (76.2%) and with a monthly income of less than $1000 (64.3%). Majority of NMs had a BS in Nursing (39.5%) and work in Mount Lebanon (33.1%). NMs mostly attended Clinical sessions (82.7%) with an average of 1.5 sessions per NM. The least attended sessions were related to Soft Skills (18.2%) and Others (19.2%). Significantly higher percentage of NMs with a technical degree and with an income of less than $1000 attended clinical sessions (88.2% and 89.1%). Conclusion: Lebanese NMs tend to focus on clinical CNE offerings rather than on managerial and leadership CNE activities. No formal regulations address the Lebanese NM scope of practice and related Continuing Nursing Education needs. Hence formal programs of professional development are needed in Lebanon and must be tailored to the NMs needs. Moreover, sources of information for updating NMs’ knowledge and skills are varied and need further investigation for their effectiveness.