Abstract
D.Cur. (Nursing Science)
A cost centre in a hospital setting was an identifiable department; such as a nursing care unit, where a nurse manager was also assigned the responsibilities of assuming the duties of a cost manager, e.g. managing the expenditure of that unit and being accountable for the costs. The cost centre was assigned an account number in the hospital accounting system for the purpose of controlling clinical and administrative costs, as well as accumulated expenses by that department (Cleverley & Cameron, 2003:437). The South African National Treasury prescribed expenditure control measures in Section 38 to ensure that expenditure should be accounted for, by appointing an accounting officer (South Africa: 1999). In the particular tertiary hospital complex environment, accounting officers were the appointed cost centre managers who were also the unit nurse managers of these nursing care units.
These managers experienced difficulties in fulfilling their dual role in a cost centre management environment for which they had not received training. The purpose of the study was to develop a training programme for nurse managers also appointed as cost centre managers at a tertiary hospital complex in the Limpopo Province. In this study, a qualitative, descriptive, exploratory and contextual design was used. Homogenous purposive sampling was conducted from a population of thirty six (36) nurse managers appointed as cost centre managers. A focus group interview session in which nine (9) cost centre managers participated and twelve (12) cost centre managers participated in one-on-one unstructured interviews were conducted until saturation of data was reached. The central question posed was: “How is it for you as a cost centre manager in your nursing care unit executing dual role for CCMT and providing quality care to patients?” Participants were given an opportunity to describe their experiences about being appointed as cost centre managers in their working situation and while providing care to patients.
Adapted phases of the development process of Meyer and Van Niekerk (2008) were used in developing the programme. The survey list of Practice Oriented theory of Dickoff, James and Wiedenbach (1968:434) and Malcolm Knowles’ adult learning (Graig, 1996:253) served as the point of departure for developing a context-specific training programme. Malcolm Knowles’ adult learning theory (Graig, 1996:253) acknowledged that adult learners had specific learning needs when compared to other learners.