[A study of leadership training program demands of first-line nurse managers in university hospitals]

There is an important concern regarding the First-line nurse manager's leadership because of the recognition that effectiveness of Leadership in this position results in benefits for the whole health care organization. So knowledge and practice of effective leadership behavior are now more essential to nursing than ever before. First-line Nurse Managers must be effective leaders to meet today's challenge because staff nurse, patient are affected by them. So the purpose of this study was to identify and to analyse the need for Leadership program of First Line nurse managers in university hospitals. There were three major purposes of this study. First, identify First-line nurse managers general characteristic, second, identify their experience of leadership training, third, identify and analysis their demands for leadership training program. The subjects for this study was 167 First-line nurse manager randomly from 18 university hospitals in Korea. The data were collected through questionnaires from Oct. 13th to Nov. 20th, 1997, data was analysed using frequencies and percentages. Especially the steps of analysis of descriptions were as follows: Initial analysis centered on the identification of the demands of first-line nurse managers. Later analysis collapsed the demands into broad categories. From the collect data, 283 demands of first-line nurse managers were identified. These demands were then sorted into 3 broad categories that included: Self development as first-line nurse managers, relationship with others, and practice The result of the study were as follows: 1) Most of nurse managers (79.6%) had leadership training course and had good experience to improve self leadership. 2) Their demands of leadership training course are as follows: First, for self as first-line nurse managers, they want to learn leadership theory, identify their leadership style and then develop their leadership skill. Second, for others as first-line nurse managers, they want to improve their communication skill, empowering others, relationship with others. Third, for patients as first-line nurse managers, improve their knowledge of practice. From the above finding, this study can be suggested the following: 1. Develop a leadership training course to improve first-line nurse manager's leadership skill according to their demands, so they will be better able to lead staff nurses for organization purposes. 2. When develop leadership training program, it must be contained the factors which first-line nurse managers want to learn.