Management education and training of nurses: research study

The model of more pro-active management with a more analytical and deliberative approach has considerable implications for the roles of all managers within the National Health Service today. Nurse managers, in particular, will now be faced with developing different managerial roles than they have had in the years since the 1974 reorganization. Nurse management courses in the past were more concerned with the overt training of behavioural skills and less concerned with the quantitative and analytical aspects of management. This paper investigates in what areas nurse managers perceived their training to have been deficient and argues for a continuous process of education, as opposed to the existing intermittent 'hurdle process' which, in the main, is the basis of nurse management development at the present time.