The Working World Of Nurses As Managers: Issues of Organizational Power

Abstract

Nurses worldwide are being expected to assume first-line management positions that require them to have a wider range of responsibilities than ever before, within healthcare organizations. In Australia, as in many other countries, nursing unit managers are responsible for managing the human, physical and financial resources of a ward or unit within a hospital or healthcare facility. In this study twenty nursing unit managers were individually interviewed and asked to describe what is like to be a nursing unit manager, as there is a paucity of literature that explores the roles of nurses who assume management positions. The findings indicate that nurses experience conflict between their roles as nurses and the expectations of them as managers. Furthermore, these conflicts were exacerbated by a lack of organizational power to get the job done. Using a theory of organizational power the narratives of the participants provide insight into some of the issues faced by this group of nursing unit managers.