[Person and motivation: awarding system as a tool for managing health personnel]

Seeing that nurses are heading towards a new era of responsibility, it follows that it is essential to motivate professional nurses. To this end, one needs must consider the degree to which the assumption of responsibility is closely linked to motivation in one's work. The article suggests close thought on the importance of incentives, which may decisively contribute to both personnel management and organisational procedures. Incentives are a tool for personnel management because they represent a combination of inputs through which the administration seeks to increase the probability that, in this case, nurses behave, and thus act, appropriately to reach company aims, hereby avoiding actions deemed ineffective. Rewarding those who produce valid results favours a good working climate, both reinforcing and boosting the motivation and commitment to being good professionals. With this aim in mind, a questionnaire is suggested, to be given to 75 nurses in a University General Hospital in the Regione Lazio; the research objective is to examine themes, such as the participation, satisfaction and motivation of the nursing staff at work as well as the role that tools of incentive cover in the real professional context. Only by having recourse to a true scenario of the working milieu, can one understand the points of strength and weakness so as to make useful changes involving first the person and then the administration.