Development and operation of a support programme for nursing service managers: Part 2.

This paper describes research conducted to develop and implement a support programme for nursing service managers suffering from fatigue. The support programme was developed on the basis of results obtained from a survey that ascertained nursing service managers' views about the problems they were experiencing in their everyday lives. A multiple case-study design was utilised to describe the operationalisation of the support programme. The sample consisted of forty-eight English speaking and fifty-two Afrikaans speaking nursing service managers from the old Transvaal region (Gauteng, North West and Eastern Transvaal. The support programme was implemented during two one-day workshops, one with the Afrikaans speaking group and one with the English speaking group of nursing service managers. Data were gathered about operationalisation of the support programme through multiple methods: observation, audiotape recordings, written documents and field notes. The data were analysed by utilising the methods of descriptive analysis. The results of the research were described by means of multiple descriptive case-studies, whereafter a cross-validation report, as described by Yinn (1989:52-57) was utilised to reflect commonalities and differences between the workshops. Conclusions and recommendations were made and limitations discussed.