Self-assessment of Administrators’ Managerial Skills and their Relationship with Effective Management in Hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences

Background and Objectives: Today, management is one of the most important factors in hospital effectiveness and performance. The objective of this study was to assess the management skills of administrators in hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences and to identify how these skills are related to effective management.   Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out over the period of February to April 2011 by enrolling 15 administrators from hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS). The tool for data collection was a self-constructed questionnaire of managerial skills containing the measures of leadership ability, effective use of organizational teams, employee motivation, change management, and effective management. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by expert opinion method. The reliability of the scale was also confirmed by obtaining a Chronbach’s alpha of 0.81 for all items. The collected data was analyzed using correlation analysis.   Findings: Our results identified relatively high self-assessment score on leadership ability and effective management, but the scores for effective use of organizational teams, employee motivation and change management were low. In addition, among considered dimensions of management skills, only leadership ability showed significant correlation with effective management.   Conclusions: A lack of relationship between effective management and most assessed managerial skills depicts an unsatisfactory picture of the overall management skills in hospitals’ administrators, which in turn suggests the need for relevant training programs.