الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
In a climate of rapid change in the structure of health services and the development of new categories of nursing personnel, it is imperative to define and set standards for the practice of nurses. A standard has been defined as a predetermined level of excellence that serves as a guide for practice. The development of standard is an important step toward assuring quality of nursing care. The focus of the standards and framework within which the multiple activities of nursing care are to be performed need to be determined. A very commonly used framework for organizing standards in structure, process and out come attributes in evaluating quality care. Such standards demonstrate to the public that nurse is concerned with the quality of nursing care and with-self regulation to assure a desirable level of care.
This study was aimed at developing structural standards for nursing department at Ain Shams University Hospital through developing structural standards and testing the validity and applicability of the proposed standards based on experts’ points of view.
The study was conducted in Ain Shams University Hospitals using an operational research design. Two groups of subjects were included; a nurse leaders group of 60 and an experts jury group of 15 medical and nursing experts. Three tools were used in different phases of the study: an opinionnaire sheet for nurse leaders, an opinionnaire sheet for validation, and a checklist for audit. The tools were pilot-tested, and changes in some statements format were done to be more understood. Fieldwork was done from the beginning of April till November 2008.
The results of the study demonstrated the following findings:
Nurses’ mean±SD age was 42.3±7.8 years, and their experience ranged between 2 and 34 years.
Statistically significant differences were revealed between nurses’ agreement upon the importance of the items of the standards on one hand, and their applicability and presence on the other hand (p<0.001). In all these differences, the percentages of agreement upon importance were higher, compared to agreement upon applicability and presence.
Concerning the comparison between applicability and presence, few statistically significant differences were revealed in some of the standards.
Regarding validation, there was a unanimous (100.0%) agreement upon all items of face validity.
Jury group’ agreement upon content validity of all standards ranged between 93.3% and 100.0%.
Auditing findings in the four hospitals indicated lack of most of the items related to educational requirements of the position, no nursing director contract, deficient nursing department goals, and absence of most of the items of standards III, IV, VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X, while all the items of nursing structure standard V were present and documented.
It is concluded that nurse managers’ awareness of the necessity and importance of nursing structure standards was high, but the problem lies in the availability of resources, which consequently has its impact on applicability. The developed standard proved to be valid through unanimous agreement of jury group members upon its face and content validity.
The structure standards developed should be applied in Ain Shams University Hospital (ASUH), and generalized to all hospitals of Ain Shams University, and this needs provision of necessary resources through cooperation of the hospitals’ administration. This involves development and application of nursing care standards, written policies and procedures, clear job descriptions, and nurse performance appraisal tool based on the developed standards. In-service training in application of the new standard is also recommended. The impact of implementation of the developed standard should be monitored, and its effect on nursing service and quality of patient care should be studied.