Abstract :
The hospital and health care institution managers are accountable persons for human source and material. They are also responsible for effective use of time during the institution goals fullfilment. Time is defined as a non-recyclable, unpostponementable and non-accumulate source that should be used carefully. The time concept becomes more important for health care management, since it is very sensitive in healt care services. In this direction, the aim of the planned study is that determine the attitude of the directors in the charge of hospitals. On the other hand study aimed to seek which variables affects the time management attitudes of hospital directors. The universe of the study consists of 135 managers that work in training and research hospitals in Izmir City. Not only a sample group but entire universe is included by the study. The study reached 113 (83,7%) people of the 135 in the universe. Out of 22 managers have not included because of assignment, long term health report/being on holiday and rejecting to attend the study. There are seven training and research hospitals in the city. In study group, there are 27 managers (20%) in Atatürk Training and Research Hospital, 27 managers (20%) in Tepecik Training and Research Hospital, 21 managers (15%) in Bozyaka Training and Research Hospital, 21 managers (15%) in Dr. Suat Seren Chest Diseases and Thoracic Surgery Training and Research Hospital, 19 managers (14%) in Dr. Behçet Uz Pediatric Diseases and Surgery Training and Research Hospital, 12 managers (9%) in Ege Gynecology and Maternity Training and Research Hospital, 9 managers (7%) in Izmir Dentistry Training Hospitals. The universe of study consists of 7(5%) head physician, 47(35%) vice-head physician, 7(5%) hospital director, 42(31%) vice-director of hospital, 7(5%) head nurse and vice-head nurse,25(19%). Question sheet method is used to gathering data for the study. The questions are formed in 2 main parts. In first main part of the question sheet, there are questions that identify the demographic characteristic of managers relating the age, gender, marital status, educational status, job and length of employment. There are questions that determine the attitude and behavior about the time management in the second main part. These question sheets include questions that determine the time management attitudes and they are developed by Britton and Tesser, translated to Turkish as “Time Management Questionnaire” by Alay and Koçak(2002). Question sheet is a scale for Turkey (Tektaş and Tektaş 2010; Başak et al. 2008). Time management question sheet includes 27 questions that consist of 3 sub-sections. First one includes 16 questions about long term and short term scheduling; second one includes 7 questions about time attitudes, and the third one includes 4 questions about time spending. The questions that developed as attitude sentences evaluated by five parted Likert scale. SPSS 17.0 package statistic program used for analysis. First of all, reliability analysis applied to time management question sheet and cronbach’s alpha reliability ratio of 27 terms that in scale was found as 0,81. Distributions, averages and standard deviation calculations evaluated for identification of the study group. Some tests and analysis applied to determine which variables have affects on attitude to time management: t-test for analytical univariate analysis, variance analysis for controlling the multivariate, correlation (Pearson) analysis for association were used statistically. Significance level of examined relation was accepted as p 0.05. The study reached 113(83,7%) hospital managers of the 135 in the city. Fifty four (47,8%) of the managers are female; 59(52.2%) of the managers are male. Five (4,4%) of the participants are head physician, 44(38,9%) of the participants are vicehead physician, 4(3,5%) of the participants are hospital director, 34(30,1%) of the universe are vice-director, 5(4,4%) of the participants are head nurse and 21(18,6%) of the participants are vice-head nurse. The values related with the time management attitude of hospital managers:were as follows; scheduling value was 3.91±0.50, time attitude value was 3.78±0.47 and time spending attitude value was 4.04±0.69. These results showed that attitude, of managers in the studied training and research hospitals, was positive about time management. The time spending, includingthe questions about wasting time, had the highest value. This result showed that hospital managers were more delicate about wasting time. Gender of the participant was effective about time management (p 0,05). Almost half of the participants (47,8%) were female. Female managers had more score than male managers. This result showed that female hospital managers had more positive attitude about wasting time than male ones. According to Erdem’s (1997) study that analyzes the time management attitude and behavior of headphysician, vice-headphysician, hospital director, vice-director of hospital, head nurse and vice-head nurse; female managers manage the time better than male ones. The other research has a similar result that female students have more positive attitude than male students about time management (Tektaş and Tektaş 2010: 227). Results are similar with data of both of the researches. The results of study showed that education level of hospital managers was not effective on time management attitude. Same study (Örücü et al. 2007) states that knowledge, skill and experience; that are varied according to education level; can be deterministic factors about efficient time management. Efficient time management levels vary according to education level. Differences among the studies can be explained with relatively long average length of employment (22.84±8.6 years) of hospital managers. At the same time, high education level of hospital managers and work experience in hospital before being manager is effective on this differentiation. Results showed that there was no influence of the manager’s job on time management. The study made by Karagöz shows that there is no difference between academic and executive jobs in terms of personal arrangement of efficient time management.(Karagöz et al. 2010: 104). This study also showed that there was no difference between the age of hospital managers and time management attitudes. The study showed that there was a relation between the age of pharmacists and attitude of time management. According to that finding, pharmacist over age of 45, use the time more efficient than 25-34 age group (Öncel et al. 2005: 205). In this condition it is important and useful to zoom the our study findings. This study showed that the time management attitudes were positive and the age average of the hospital managers was 45.57±8.9. That age average was more than the average (25-34) that cause the differentiation in the other study. This situation can be explained as time management attitudes were similar in the same age groups. There is no meaningful difference between managers teachers, that have more experience because of rising working time thanks to the time management attitudes, and the others (Kocabas and Erdem 2003: 200). Also, there is no meaningful difference among the managers according to their seniority about time management (Yavuz and Sünbül 2004: 377). Similarly, this study shows that there is no difference between time management attitude and length of employment. This result can be explained as experience of managers is not effective on time management attitudes. As a result; as other production factors, time is unique and valuable factor that is in the responsibility of hospital managers. There are two sides of importance for this factor in health services; hospitals and patients. The health managers, regarding the sensivity of health service against the time, should give more importance to time management that has a role for the success in long term and broaden the manager’s horizon.
