Hospital manager’ competence: study in a Brazilian public hospital

Abstract

This study aimed to identify know hospital manager’s’ competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes), so the objectives were: to identify the most important competences according to the professionals; measure what skills are most developed in these professionals, and find which competences need to be improved.
A descriptive study was made, using the Lazarotto model (2001) with 24 managers of a Brazilian public hospital. The data showed that, typically, those skills identified as most important are also the most developed - IT professionals. However, there are several gaps in the skills of hospital managers, and the main skills are: public health policies, information systems, development planning, strategic management.
The skills that need to be developed most are: work force management, to be an agent of innovatiion and change, troubleshooting, and management programs designed to motivate the team. Finally, the attitudes withthe biggest gaps are being a leading educator, developing initiative and autonomy of the team, encouraging the creativity of staff and community groups to be creative and encouraging teamwork.
In short, the work served as an initial analysis to identify gaps in the training of professionals and pointed out that among the three types of skills, attitude of the group is considered the most important by professionals and therefore deserves the most greater attention.