The relationship between employees’ continuing education and performance in Tehran’s teaching hospitals

Introduction: Continuing education and training of employees significantly affect a hospital’s performance and efficiency, and learning organizations usually exhibit higher efficiency. Hence, the objective of this study was to evaluate the correlation between the hospital employees’ continuing education and performance indicators in the teaching hospitals affiliated to Tehran’s Azad University.Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted in the teaching hospitals affiliated to Tehran’s Azad University in 2014. The subjects consisted of 70 professional hospital employees, including physicians, nurses, midwives and other personnel who had attended continuing education courses. A data collection form was used to collect the data. The data were analyzed with SPSSW-20 software. Pearson correlation coefficient was used at a significance level of 0.05.Results:The number of continuing education courses held for physicians and nurses was equal )five courses), while fewer courses were held for the remaining personnel. There were significant associations between the employees’ continuing education and bed occupancy rate (p=0.009) and bed turnover interval (p=0.01). There was no significant association between the employees’ continuing education and hospital death rate (p=0.19).Conclusion: Training employees ultimately affects their performance in the hospital. Hence, a deeper insight into the significance of hospital training is needed for decision-making policy-makers and for hospitals’ executive managers to efficiently use the limited therapeutic resources and eventually achieve optimum effectiveness.Keywords: Continuing education of personnel, Performance, Teaching hospital