Abstract

Hospital nursing procedures are rapidly increasing in number and in complexity, keeping pace with the continuous advances being made in medical science. This, coupled with the fact that many nurses are resuming their careers after a period of professional inactivity, make it imperative that hospitals provide facilities for assisting nursing personnel in becoming acquainted with unfamiliar procedures. This study was done to learn what resources hospital nursing personnel use most as a guide in performing unfamiliar procedures, and by internal analysis, to identify some of the factors influencing the choice of resources used by different levels of nursing personnel. Following a review of pertinent literature, the descriptive survey was the method the method selected for the collection of data. Interviews were conducted, with the participants being one hundred non-student nursing service employees from three selected hospitals in the greater Los Angeles area. The interviews were structured to reveal what resources had been selected by each interviewee for guidance in performing a specific unfamiliar procedure, and to identify the factor influencing the choice of resources. In analyzing and interpreting the data, it was found that in this selected group of interviewees, 89 percent of those who had encountered unfamiliar procedures selected human resources to guide them, the most widely selected resource being the charge nurse or the team leader. On the basis of this fining, the hypothesis was accepted. The hypothesis restated was that nursing personnel tend to choose human resources rather than procedure manuals to guide them in performing unfamiliar nursing procedures in hospitals. Eleven percent of those who encountered unfamiliar procedures selected the procedure manual as a guide. The factors influencing the choice of resource most seemed to be that of habit. In light of the findings of this study, several conclusions were drawn, and recommendations were made for further study. It was additionally recommended that since a large majority of nursing services personnel were found to look to human resources for guidance in becoming acquainted with unfamiliar procedures, nursing service administrators gave serious consideration to strengthening and expanding in-service education programs by up-grading the quality and quantity of in-service education personnel.

LLU Discipline

Nursing

Department

Nursing

School

Graduate School

First Advisor

Winifred Edwards

Second Advisor

Ellen Gibson

Third Advisor

Bessie Wat

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Degree Level

M.S.

Year Degree Awarded

1963

Date (Title Page)

6-1963

Language

English

Library of Congress/MESH Subject Headings

Nursing -- guidebooks

Type

Thesis

Page Count

viii; 78

Digital Format

PDF

Digital Publisher

Loma Linda University Libraries

Usage Rights

This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has granted Loma Linda University a limited, non-exclusive right to make this publication available to the public. The author retains all other copyrights.

Collection

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collection Website

http://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/

Repository

Loma Linda University. Del E. Webb Memorial Library. University Archives

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