Introduction: With emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, hospitals, as the core organizational
structure of the healthcare sector providing services to the patients affected by the virus, were
confronted with several issues. The aim of this study was to investigate the challenges and
problems of hospitals during the corona virus pandemic.
Methods: This is a qualitative phenomenological study using a content analysis approach by
encoding the data retrieved from 41 hospitals in Fars province, Iran.
Results: The content analysis of the data yielded 4 themes, 15 subthemes, and 1140 codes.
Factors like lack of managerial knowledge, lack of medical knowledge, impairment in hospital
information system (HIS), and lack of resources were shown as the major contributors leading
to inefficiency and ineffectiveness in hospitals during the pandemic.
Conclusion: This research highlighted the issue of ‘lack of managerial knowledge’ among the
healthcare staff as the most prominent weakness of hospitals when faced with the pandemic,
which urgently needs to be addressed by scholars and managers in the scope of study to
enhance the theoretical and practical framework in knowledge of management within the
employees.