Nurse managers' opinions of information system support for performance management: a correlational survey.

BACKGROUND: Current information systems do not effectively support nurse managers' duties, such as reporting, resource management and assessing clinical performance. Few performance management information systems are available and features in many are scattered.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the study was to determine nurse managers' opinions of information system support for performance management.

METHODS: An online questionnaire was used to collect data from nurse managers (n = 419). Pearson's correlation coefficients and linear regression were used to examine the relationships between variables, which were nurse managers' ability to manage resources, to report and evaluate productivity, and to assess nursing performance and clinical procedures.

RESULTS: More than half of the managers used performance management systems daily. Managers (60%) felt that they can use information systems to follow the use of physical resources and in general (63%) they felt that it is easy to perform searches with the systems used for following up activity. Nurse managers' ability to manage resources, to report productivity, and to assess nursing care performance were correlated significantly with each other.

CONCLUSION: Currently, managers have to collect data from various systems for management purposes, as system integration does not support performance data collection. The availability of continuous in-service training had a positive effect on information system use.