A Comparison of Nursing and Non-nursing Supervisory Managers’ Competence at an Urban Tertiary Hospital in North Central Nigeria

Aims: Supervisory managers are key to ensuring that hospitals are effective, and they also contribute to employee satisfaction in the workplace. There is inadequate knowledge regarding their competences, skills and skill gaps. The study aimed to determine supervisory managers’ self-assessed managerial competence, and compare nursing and non-nursing managers.

Study Design: A cross-sectional survey of all consenting supervisory managers.

Place and Duration of Study: Bingham University Teaching Hospital Jos, February to March 2016.

Methodology: A two-part, self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data on socio-demographic, work context and supervisor management competence. Data was entered to a data entry form in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 21).

Results: A total of 48 managers completed the study giving a study response rate of 85.7%. Most of the participants were female (70.8%), with a mean age of 46.7±8.67 (Nurses 53.1±4.26 vs Non-nurses 43.1±8.49, P<.001) and mostly from the Health Service Provider cadre (64.6%). They had a mean duration of service of 19.9±10.3 years (Nurses 28.1±4.71 vs Non-nurses 15.4±9.72, P<.001). Median duration of management experience was 4 years and range of 1-26 years. Overall, 52.1% of the managers assessed themselves as competent (Nurses 58.8% vs Non-nurses 48.4%, P=.509).

“Gaining acceptance as Supervisor” and “Counselling a trouble employee” were the domains with the highest proportion (81.25%) of managers self-assessing as competent. “Dealing with performance problems” was the domain that the least proportion of managers (41.7%) felt competent. There were no statistically significant differences in competences of Nurse and Non-Nurse managers. Age, gender, occupation, education, years of service and years in management were not significant predictors of overall management competence.

Conclusion: Just over half of the managers were competent overall. There were significant gaps in managers competence in the performance related areas.