This paper reports some of the preliminary findings of research that proposes to explore the nature of the hospital managers' work, their opinions about the most essential functions, roles, skills and training courses needed to manage the Ministry of Health (MOH) hospitals in Saudi Arabia (SA). It intends to describe four types of hospital managers according to their educational background and managerial experience. Self-administered postal questionnaires were distributed to 218 managers working in MOH hospitals across the country. The use of postal survey allowed coverage of a sample across a wide geographical region. 72.9% of questionnaires were completed, which were valid for descriptive and univariate analysis
