Telma Zahirian Moghadam

AIM: Nurses' emotional intelligence (EI) affects many of their behavioural skills. Given the importance of communication skills, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between EI and the communication skills of emergency department nurses. METHOD: 253 nurses working in five hospitals affiliated to Ardabil University of Medical Sciences took part in this cross-sectional analytical study. Participants completed Goleman's EI Scale and a researcher-designed communication skills questionnaire. Validity and reliability of the tools were measured throughout the study. Data analysis was carried out using analysis of variance, Pearson correlation and Spearman correlation tests in SPSS v18. FINDINGS: The mean EI score was estimated to be 78.31 with the highest and lowest scores related to self-awareness (20.83) and self-management (18.19) dimensions respectively. The mean total score of communication skills was estimated to be 70.91. There was a significant relationship between total EI score and total communication skills score ( r =0.775, P <0.01) and a strong significant relationship between the four dimensions of EI and the total score of communication skills. CONCLUSION: Since EI and its dimensions have a positive effect on nurses' communication skills hospital managers can enhance EI by organising training sessions and promoting communication skills and provide the ground for continuous improvement of hospital services.

BACKGROUND: Different countries have set different policies to control and decrease the costs of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Iran was aiming to reduce the economic burden of different disease by a recent reform from named as health transformation plan (HTP). This study aimed to examine the economic burden of CVDs before and after of HTP. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 600 patients with CVDs, who were randomly selected from a specialized cardiovascular hospital in the north-west of Iran. Direct and indirect costs of CVDs were calculated using the cost of illness and human capital approaches. Data were collected using a researcher-made checklist obtained from several sources including structured interviews, the Statistical Center of Iran, Iran's Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, the central bank of Iran, and the data of global burden of disease obtained from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation to estimate direct and mortality costs. All costs were calculated in Iranian Rials (IRR). RESULTS: Total costs of CVDs were about 5571 and 6700 billion IRR before and after the HTP, respectively. More than 62% of the total costs of CVDs accounted for premature death before (64.89%) and after (62.01%) the HTP. The total hospitalization costs of CVDs was significantly increased after the HTP (p = 0.038). In both times, surgical services and visiting had the highest and lowest share of hospitalization costs, respectively. The OOP expenditure decreased significantly and reached from 54.2 to 36.7%. All hospitalization costs, except patients' OOP expenditure, were significantly increased after the HTP about 1.3 times. Direct non-medical costs reached from 2.4 to 3.3 billion before and after the HTP, respectively. CONCLUSION: Economic burden of CVDs increased in the north-west of Iran after the HTP due to the increase of all direct and indirect costs, except the OOP expenditure. Non-allocation of defined resources, which coincided with the international and national political and economic challenges in Iran, led to unsustainable resources of the HTP. So, no results of this study can be attributed solely to the HTP. Therefore, more detailed studies should be carried out on the reasons for the significant increase in CVDs costs in the region.

BACKGROUND: Professionalism, stress and demographic factors are the three key influences in nurses' intention to provide care. OBJECTIVES: This study examined the levels of work intention, stress and professionalism of nurses and determine the relationship between nursing work intention and factors in response to COVID-19. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 362 nurses from COVID-19-devoted hospitals in Iran. A self-administered electronic-based questionnaire was developed and used to determine levels of stress, professionalism, and nursing intention. Multiple regression analysis was carried out to analyze the correlation between nursing intention with respect to stress and professionalism. RESULTS: The overall stress, professionalism, and nursing intention scores were 48.56, 21.46, and 17.83 respectively. There were significant differences in nursing intention scores between gender, marital status, and having training groups (p < 0.05). The regression analysis revealed that nursing intention had a significant relationship with older age (p < 0.001,S.E = 1.11,B = 17.02), higher income level (p < 0.001,S.E = 1.81,B = 6.98), having previous training (p = 0.008,S.E = 1.22,B = 3.27), higher stress level (p < 0.001,S.E = 2.37,B = -21.39), and high professionalism level (p < 0.001,S.E = 1.16,B = 11.99). CONCLUSION: Having an adequate staff requirement plan, planning appropriate training for nurses, and proactive psychological support are crucial to prevent burnout and continue to provide nursing services.

BACKGROUND: The nursing profession is known to induce high levels of stress, and being simultaneously engaged in a stressful professional occupation and having a family life can lead to work-family conflict. Healthcare providers require recruitment and retention strategies that preserve nurses' quality of work-life and mitigate work-family conflict. AIM: To investigate the relationship between quality of work-life and work-family conflict among hospital nurses in Iran, as well as the relationships between work-family conflict and quality of work life, and between age, professional experience, type of employment, work shift and marital status. METHOD: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 378 nurses working in six Iranian teaching hospitals, who were selected using random quota sampling. Data on age, professional experience, type of employment, work shift and marital status was collected. The study questionnaire was based on the 53-item Quality of Work Life scale and the 18-item Work-Family Conflict scale. Correlations were established using Pearson's chi-squared and eta-squared tests. RESULTS: A total of 93% of participants experienced moderate or high levels of work-family conflict and 83% had a low or moderate quality of work life. On average, the levels of work-family conflict and quality of work life were moderate. Quality of work life decreased with increasing work-family conflict. CONCLUSION: Healthcare providers can use these results to inform their recruitment and retention strategies. Nurse managers can mitigate any adverse effects of work-family conflict on quality of work life by offering staff interventions such as short training courses on how to manage work-family conflict.

INTRODUCTION: Hospitals are the most expensive health services provider in the world. Therefore, the evaluation of their performance can be used to reduce costs. The aim of this study was to determine the efficiency of the hospitals at the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). METHODS: This was a cross-sectional and retrospective study that assessed the performance of Kurdistan teaching hospitals (n = 12) between 2007 and 2013. The Stochastic Frontier Analysis method was used to achieve this aim. The numbers of active beds, nurses, physicians, and other staff members were considered as input variables, while the inpatient admission was considered as the output. The data were analyzed using Frontier 4.1 software. RESULTS: The mean technical efficiency of the hospitals we studied was 0.67. The results of the Cobb-Douglas production function showed that the maximum elasticity was related to the active beds and the elasticity of nurses was negative. Also, the return to scale was increasing. CONCLUSION: The results of this study indicated that the performances of the hospitals were not appropriate in terms of technical efficiency. In addition, there was a capacity enhancement of the output of the hospitals, compared with the most efficient hospitals studied, of about33%. It is suggested that the effect of various factors, such as the quality of health care and the patients' satisfaction, be considered in the future studies to assess hospitals' performances.