Brazil and U.S. Nursing Service Quality

The development and maintenance of output quality within any field of endeavor involves elements of philosophy, economics, operations, management, and marketing. Each of these ares of interest is applicable to the development and maintenance of output quality within the hospital environment; however, as service providers, the development and maintenance of hospital output quality must place an especially heavy emphasis on the marketing factor. This research describes a a research proposal for the performance of a crosscultural assessment of nursing service quality in hospital settings in Brazil and the United States.

The standards of health care are generally high throughout the United States. Within a newly industrialized country such as Brazil, however, health care standards tend to be uneven across geographical sectors, within the urbanrural dichotomy, and in relation to personal income levels. The health care needs and the desires of patients for caring and highquality care tend to be similar, however, regardless of the extend of industrialization, and regardless of internal divisions with a specific country.

Quality, however, is a highly personalized concept and perception when applied to health care services. Differences in expectations lead to differences in the perceived level of quality in health care services delivere

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it is the employees, not the managers, who are in charge of quality at service organizations (Armstrong and Symonds, 1991, p. 100). Thus, an effective application of TQM in service companies requires high levels of employee job satisfaction, and greater discretionary authority for employees interacting with customers (Armstrong and Symonds, 1991, p. 100). High quality in services industries means, among other things, that the employee interacting with a customer can solve the customer's problem then and there, as opposed to telling a customer that "We'll get back to you" (Armstrong and Symonds, 1991, p. 100). The effective application of TQM in services industries requires that organization exercise great care in employee selection, provide superior training to employees, provide effective jobrelated support services for employees, and retain employees (Armstrong and Symonds, 1991, p. 101). Service companies must also remember that traditional "MBA programs and accounting systems don't cut in the service game. In a service business, knowledge and information are the raw materials, and the assets are loyal customers and employees. Accounting systems don't measure those. Career paths and compensation schemes fight against th
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Approximate Word count = 3137
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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