Crisis Management During the Covid 19 Pandemic by First - Line Nurse Administrators in Community Hospitals in Southern Thailand’s Five Border Provinces

Abstract

Front-Line Nursing Administrators [FLNAs] have played important roles in managing the crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic by mitigating and preventing harm to healthcare providers and clients. This research was aimed at studying the productivity levels and comparing crisis management actions [CMA] among different groups of FLNAs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 168 FLNAs working in different direct patient contact units of the community hospitals located in the five border provinces of southern Thailand. They volunteered to participate and were recruited using a purposive sampling. The research instrument consisted of two sections: a demographic survey and the crisis management action questionnaire. The instrument’s content validity was examined by three experts and the content validity index was determined to be .91. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the second section was .96.  Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, and ANOVAs. The research results revealed that the FLNAs’, on average. had high level overall scores on the CMA (M = 4.01, SD = 0.68). The findings also showed that the FLNAs who had experience working on CMA planning with external agencies had significantly higher average score than the FLNAs without such experience (t(165.64) = 3.05, p < .01). The type of unit in which the participants worked resulted in significantly different CMA scores (F = 5.06, p < .05, d = 76.65) as well.