The Relationship Between Strategic Thinking and Hospital Managers’ Productivity in Teaching Hospitals of Shiraz

Background: Using different methods of strategic thinking is essential for organizations such as hospitals; without them, many organizations will not survive. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the relationship between strategic thinking and management productivity in teaching hospitals of Shiraz. Objectives: Because of the importance of strategic management in organizational productivity, the present study is conducted with the goal of assessing the relationship between strategic thinking and hospital managers’ productivity. Patients and Methods: This descriptive-correlational study was conducted in 2015. The statistical population included all managers in different levels in the teaching hospitals of Shiraz (170 persons). Among these, 119 participants were selected through Cochran’s formula and a simple random sampling method. Data were collected by a questionnaire addressing strategic thinking based on Liedtka’s model and Hersey and Blanchard’s theory. Its validity was verified by a panel of experts and its reliability was measured in previous studies. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 20 using descriptive and analytic statistics (analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson’s correlation test and t-test). Results: The average and Standard Deviation of strategic thinking managers was (2.2 ± 0.04), and productivity of management (2.32 ± 0.37) was estimated on the average level. There was a direct meaningful relationship between strategically thinking managers and productivity (r = 0.387, P < 0.001). The results also showed that there is a meaningful correlation between strategic thinking and sustainability, organizational support and understanding of the job. Conclusions: Due to the correlation between strategic thinking and productivity, we recommend educating and training managers in the use of strategic thinking, and that they understand its importance to productivity. Managers should understand that increasing efficiency in a competitive environment today is a necessity for survival

Hospital Managers’ Perception of Recent Health Care Reform in Teaching Hospitals of Qazvin, Iran

Abstract Background: The main purpose of any government from a healthcare reform is to improve the service quality and raised public satisfaction. Objectives: As the important role of managerial human resources in any organizational changes, this paper tried to examine the point of view of this group about the recent reform in governmental hospitals of Qazvin. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in January 2015. The statistical population consisted of 50 executive managers of Qazvin teaching hospitals. The data gathering instrument was a research-made questionnaire with approved reliability and validity (α = 0.84). Data analyse was performed in SPSS version 20 using descriptive and analytic statistics (analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlation test and one sample t-test). Results: A total of 43.2% of managers believed that this reform was a good restrictor for malpractices in healthcare and 31.8% believed that it will not be so useful to improve the society health status. The average score of resource preparation, insurance companies coordination, changing the routine workflows, and finally achieving the goals, had a meaningful difference (P ˂ 0.05) and the average score of these fields were upper than average. Conclusions: The findings showed that based on the managers’ point of view, the reform plan was able to achieve its primary goals; however, it could not meet their exceptions in improving the society health status. Therefore, it is necessary to design some interventions for changing this perception. Keywords: Healthcare Reform, Managers, Teaching Hospital

The effects of the health reform plan on the performance indicators of hospitals affiliated with Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Iran, 2014

BACKGROUND: One of the significant goals of healthcare delivery organizations is to promote people’s health and provide high quality care. In this regard, health reform plan was designed in Iran. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the performance of teaching hospitals after running of health system reform plan in Iran.METHODS: This retrospective-descriptive study was carried out in 4 hospitals (Avicenna, Velayat, Rajaee, and Qhods) affiliated with Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Qazvin, Iran, in 2014. Data collection tool was the checklist of standard indicators of Iranian Ministry of Health, because the checklist is standard to measure hospitals’ performance. In this study, 19 indicators (performance indicators, personnel indicators, and financial indicators) were investigated. To fill out the indicators checklist, the statistics unit of Ministry of Health was used according to the reports of two consecutive years of 2013 and 2014. The collected data were analyzed using Excel software.RESULTS: In general, out of the 7 performance indicators that were investigated in the hospitals, increase was observed in four, and decrease was seen in three items. Out of the six personnel indicators, all of the hospitals experienced a rise; and out of the six financial indicators, four items increased and two decreased.CONCLUSION: The results of this study indicated that after one year of implementing health reform plan, the mentioned health care system experienced a remarkable progress in the hospitals. Providing the necessary infrastructures can help better conduction of the plan and promotion of the mentioned indicators by removing or decreasing the effect of some barriers

An Overview of the Opportunities the Presence of Specialist Doctors Resident in Hospitals

Attention to the functions and pattern organized staff are important to achieve organizational goals, especially for hospitals that are one of the important components into account an element in improving the health system and providing a fair field of utilization of health intervention. So this study was to review the opportunities of presence resident doctors in hospitals based on the instructions of the health system reform plan. This is a narrative review that returning to the site of the Persian (Magiran, Irandoc, Google Scholar, Iranmedex, SID) and English (PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE and Sciencedirect) and also library studies with keywords (physicians, resident physicians, health equity, project development, opportunity specialist and human resources) and the English word for them in this area and the 30 related articles was extracted. Given the evidence may not be fully implemented in all government hospitals because of problems such as the lack of doctors in public hospitals or other administrative problems, but it can be said that is one of the best model to achieve better clinical outcomes in hospitals. In order to solve problems, there is the need to design and create the appropriate environment for the successful implementation plan, or create an ideal environment for the implementation of evidence-based medicine moved

The effects of the health reform plan on the performance indicators of hospitals affiliated with Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Iran, 2014

BACKGROUND: One of the significant goals of healthcare delivery organizations is to promote people’s health and provide high quality care. In this regard, health reform plan was designed in Iran. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the performance of teaching hospitals after running of health system reform plan in Iran. METHODS: This retrospective-descriptive study was carried out in 4 hospitals (Avicenna, Velayat, Rajaee, and Qhods) affiliated with Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Qazvin, Iran, in 2014. Data collection tool was the checklist of standard indicators of Iranian Ministry of Health, because the checklist is standard to measure hospitals’ performance. In this study, 19 indicators (performance indicators, personnel indicators, and financial indicators) were investigated. To fill out the indicators checklist, the statistics unit of Ministry of Health was used according to the reports of two consecutive years of 2013 and 2014. The collected data were analyzed using Excel software. RESULTS: In general, out of the 7 performance indicators that were investigated in the hospitals, increase was observed in four, and decrease was seen in three items. Out of the six personnel indicators, all of the hospitals experienced a rise; and out of the six financial indicators, four items increased and two decreased. CONCLUSION: The results of this study indicated that after one year of implementing health reform plan, the mentioned health care system experienced a remarkable progress in the hospitals. Providing the necessary infrastructures can help better conduction of the plan and promotion of the mentioned indicators by removing or decreasing the effect of some barriers

Designing an intelligent system for diagnosing type 2 diabetes using the data mining approach: brief report

Background: Diabetes mellitus has several complications. The Late diagnosis of diabetes in people leads to the spread of complications. Therefore, this study has been done to determine the possibility of predicting diabetes type 2 by using data mining techniques. Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic study that was conducted as a cross-sectional study. The study population included people referring to health centers in Mohammadieh City in Qazvin Province, Iran, from April to June 2015 for screening for diabetes. The 5-step CRISP method was used to implement this study. Data were collected from March 2015 to June 2015. In this study, 1055 persons with complete information were included in the study. Of these, 159 were healthy and 896 were diabetic. A total of 11 characteristics and risk factors were examined, including the age, sex, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, family history of diabetes, BMI, height, weight, waistline, hip circumference and diagnosis. The results obtained by support vector machine (SVM), decision tree (DT) and the k-nearest neighbors algorithm (k- NN) were compared with each other. Data was analyzed using MATLAB® software, version 3.2 (Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA, USA). Results: Data analysis showed that in all criteria, the best results were obtained by decision tree with accuracy (0.96) and precision (0.89). The k-NN methods were followed by accuracy (0.96) and precision (0.83) and support vector machine with accuracy (0.94) and precision (0.85). Also, in this study, decision tree model obtained the highest degree of class accuracy for both diabetes classes and healthy in the analysis of confusion matrix. Conclusion: Based on the results, the decision tree represents the best results in the class of test samples which can be recommended as a model for predicting diabetes type 2 using risk factor data

Job stress and its related factors in nurses of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences

Background: Since work related stress imposes an uncustomary and irreversible adverse effect on work structure, it is considered as one of the most important job hazards in the health industry especially in hospitals. Objective: This study aimed to determine the Job stress and its related factors in nurses of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This is a descriptive cross sectional research study done by sampling census on 112 nursing personnel in one of the Qazvin educational medical hospitals in 2010 with use of a standard stress questionnaire. Information gathering tool included two sections of demographic information and job stress in 7 parts and SPSSWIN/18 software with a 95% confidence was used to evaluate the findings. Findings: Results indicate that 4.6% of the nurses have low job related stress; 74.1% with medium job related stress and 21.3%confront high job related stress. Since this study was based on evaluation of major important stressors; results indicated that between amount of intensity of work stress and demographic particulars of the studied society like sex, age, years of service, kind of employment ,level of education, work shift and amounts received have no significant relationship (P>0.05). Pearson coefficient correlation test results also indicated the followings: job stress or role ambiguity (P<0.001), over-loaded role (P=0.001), role scarcity (P=0.001), work intensity (P=0.004), work repetition (P<0.001) have a straight line relationship (P<0.05). Conclusion: Based on the results of various studies, work stress whether in a positive form or negative form, constitute an important part of individuals working life; hence with the existence of medium to high work stress intensity in the studied society we have to point out that long term stress at work will cause an irreparable damage and we have to change management view points and pay special attention for making a suitable work related condition or effective intervention in the important factors to reduce or eliminate stress from the work arenas, hence improving the quality of nursing services. Keyword

Opportunities and challenges of resident specialists' attendance plan guidelines (health-care transformation plan) in Isfahan university hospitals in 2015

Background: Given new reforms in Iran's health-care system and due to the need for gathering evidence regarding the implementation of this plan, this study aimed to investigate opportunities and challenges created by resident specialist attendance plan guidelines in university hospitals. Materials and Methods: This study used the qualitative method. Semi-structured interviews were used for data gathering. The study population included all experts of Isfahan University of Medical Science. Sampling was carried out using purposeful sampling method and continued until data saturation was reached. In total, 16 experts were interviewed. Criteria such as “reliability of information,” “trustworthiness,” and “verifiability of the information” were considered. Interviewees were assured that their names would keep hidden and that all information is confidential. Subject analysis method was used for data analysis. Results: The findings of this study based on subject analysis led to extracting three themes in regards of challenges in the implementation of resident (specialist or fellowship) plan in hospitals including structural, management, and resource challenges and one theme in the area of opportunities which were improved quality and timely provision of services. Conclusion: The findings showed that despite the strengths of this guideline, there are some fundamental challenges in various areas and need better attention by national level policymakers. These results help health-care policymakers to evaluate the problem with a better attitude and improve the necessary plans for implementation of these guidelines

The relationship between Employees Level of education and the learning organization profile of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences

Background: Nowadays, organizations to survive and gain competitive advantage require structural changes for conforming to their surrounding environmental changes. Many organizations are becoming learning organizations for this purpose. Objective: The purpose of this article was to determine profile of learner's organization in Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, using continuous system linked organizational model based on different levels of education. Methods: This is an applied study using a practical survey; Statistical community include people in all different organizational levels of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, (consisting of 1517 people) which have been working during 2008-2009 academic year. Using formula, a sample of 260 people was randomly studied. Sample size allocation to different study groups was according to performance size. Data collection consisted of a questionnaire with 50 questions on a Likert scale. Data analysis was performed by SPSS software using statistical tests ANOVA and Student-T-Test. Findings: The results of the research showed a community of 52% women and 48% men; of which 56.15% had a bachelorette degree (BS or BA), 18.85% masters and general practitioners degree (MS, MA or MSc.) and 16.16% specialist's doctorate and PhD degrees. The results showed none of the people in different educational backgrounds evaluated the University as a learning organization. Among the five dimensions of learning organization model; people and knowledge, there was no significant difference at different levels of education. While there was a significant difference (p<0.05) in the learning, organization and technology dimensions. The most points in learning dimension (20.70), organization (19.17) and technology (20.70) and overall assessment (93.91) belonged to groups with less than BA education. Conclusion: According to research results, university in different educational levels was not assess as a learning organization and the weakest subsystems, was related to learning subsystem. No organization can survive without continuous learning. Managers must facilitate learning as a major activity, on this basis, the special attention of university decision makers are needed to move towards a learning organization. In this context the university can establish and develop an on time and flexible learning programs at top of its agenda. Keywords: learning organization; System Linked Organizational Model; Universit

Quality standards and its compatibility rating prioritizing: the viewpoint of providers and recipients of hospital services in Iran

Introduction: Quality of health services is the rate of achievement to the most desirable resultants of health, so that provided services are effective, efficient, and affordable. Thus, quality evaluation can be an important source of information for recognition of problems and favorable plans in provision of treatment services. Method: In this cross-sectional study, criteria of quality in hospital services and the compatibility rate from viewpoint of providers and recipients of services in Iran were studied using simple random sampling method in 4 provinces of country among 1485 people. Data were gathered using a designed questionnaire; criteria of quality in views of providers and recipients of services in six dimensions were studied. The data were analyzed using SPSSW-20 software. In order to analyze the information, descriptive tests and to determine the compatibility rate between the two groups, Chi-square test were used at a significance level of 0.05. Results:Based on the results of this research, most percentage of accordance between the two groups of providers and recipients of services was in “Human Resources” dimension and in 1st priority (“Knowledge and specialty and skills of physicians and nurses and other people involved in patient care” criterion) with a frequency of 76.3 and 73.1 percent. Among the six studied dimensions, compatibility rate between the two groups, in “Access to Service and Care”, “Respecting Values and Emotional Support”, and “Management and Coordination of Care System” dimensions was significant (P<0.001). Conclusion: Quality evaluation is an important source of information for recognition of problems and favorable plans in provision of effective health services. Therefore, recognition of different views of beneficiary groups and specially attempts to make perceptions of providers and recipients closer in the context of quality criteria are essential