The nurse manager’s perspective in maintaining a quality practice environment

The quality of the working environment is currently an important and rising issue in a number of disciplines, including nursing. To practice effectively, nurses today need an environment that supports quality professional practice. This qualitative research study used an interpretive description methodology to examine the nurse manager's perspective on creating and maintaining a quality practice environment. Four nurse managers were recruited from an acute care setting to be interviewed for this study. The deductive data analysis of participant narrative revealed three major and broad themes. These themes are: establishing a trust relationship; leadership philosophy and style; and organizational and staff support. The process, as the participants' stories reveal, is a cyclic, responsive, and interactive one, in which managers bring to bear an array of interdependent strategies on the complex problem of creating a quality practice environment. The results of this study shed light on the processes and challenges nurse manager's face in the current and ever changing health care system and provide a foundational background to the leadership traits needed to create and maintain a quality practice environment that promotes nurses' satisfaction and good patient outcomes. The findings of this research offer insights to inform nursing researchers, institutions, and policy makers in their efforts to understand and improve nursing practice, provide appropriate levels of support, improve educational programs, and develop better guidelines for creating and maintaining a quality practice environment.Applied Science, Faculty ofNursing, School ofGraduat