BACKGROUND:Working in nursing is mentally and physically demanding and is one of the most stressful professions.AIM:To determine the basic causes of stress and examine the symptoms of stress among healthcare professionals at the primary and secondary level of health care.MATERIAL AND METHODS:The research was based on the descriptive and causal non-experimental method of empirical research. The independent samples t-test was used.RESULTS:The survey results have shown that those employed in nursing are exposed to stressful situations on a daily basis, most often involving psychological or physical violence in the workplace (M = 4.2), dealing with death (M = 3.9), lack of personnel (M = 3.9) and a high frequency of patients (M = 3.8). The following stress factors cause women greater stress than they do men: relationships among co-workers (t = 2.745; p = 0.006), psychological or physical violence in the workplace (t = 3.492; p = 0.001), and working with difficult patients (t = 2.427; p = 0.017).CONCLUSION:To manage risks, employees and employers must work together and establish a suitable safety and organisational culture, which would enable them to manage and reduce stress.

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Aim: The aim of the study is to identify nurse managers' competencies in Slovenia regarding various healthcare organisations, public and private healthcare sectors, and management levels, as well as the reasons for their differences. Design: The study was based on quantitative and qualitative research. Methods: An online survey was conducted among 297 nurse managers in Slovenia, and in-depth interviews with 12 nurse managers were carried out. Results: Managers who worked in nursing homes were significantly more likely to perceive themselves as being more competent in leadership (p = 0.001) and financial management (p = 0.004) than their colleagues. Managers who had higher management positions were significantly more likely to perceive themselves as being more competent in financial management than their colleagues in lower management positions (p = 0.002). Nurse managers in the private sector perceived themselves to be significantly more competent in financial management (p = 0.0001). The reasons for nurse managers' differences in proficiency levels are the degree of job security, and degree of autonomy and support in the healthcare team. Conclusion: The study identified inadequate nurse manager competencies, and reflected the needs of nurse managers for designing and providing health management programmes aimed at enhancing management capacity in the health sector in Slovenia.

Today the world faces many social challenges in the economic, social and environmental spheres that needs to be overcome. The public debate has been focused on finding solutions to them and one of these has been addressed as social entrepreneurship. This phenomenon combines the resourcefulness of traditional entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. Observing the positive social impact of entrepreneurs providing basic needs, this paper recognizes their unique role in efficiently contributing to the achievement of sustainable development goals. The purpose of this article is to introduce the connection of social innovations and sustainable growth as an important phenomenon in today's real economy. Based on the interviews with the focus group and the cases of good practice, the authors have established the development of social innovation and social entrepreneurship in Slovenia. It is important in numerous fields, especially in employment, social inclusion, demographic changes, health care, education, finance, political structures and social integration. We found that the obstacle in the development of social entrepreneurship is scattered, unrelated or absent support mechanisms that do not offer the right incentives for the creation and the development of social enterprises. Another conclusion is that cooperation with partners from different sectors of the society is an important fundament in their work with social entrepreneurship.

Previous studies rather neglected the issue of how nurses are satisfied with the usage of communication channels by their managers. This paper aims to discover how nurses in Croatia and Slovenia are satisfied with their managers’ usage of communication channels, and also how this satisfaction is associated with the employee-organisation relationship. A self-administrated electronic questionnaire was conducted with 272 nurses in Croatia and Slovenia. The study results show that top nurse managers most commonly use mediated communication channels, while middle and executive nurse managers use more interpersonal communication channels. Employees are most satisfied when top nurse managers use emails, middle nurse managers face-to-face communication, emails and phone calls, and executive nurse managers face-to-face communication, emails, phone calls, instant messaging and internal social networks to communicate with them. Younger employees are significantly more satisfied with nurse managers’ use of new communication and information technologies. The study also shows that satisfaction with interpersonal communication used by the executive nurse managers is positively associated with employee-organization relationships and satisfaction with middle and top managers’ utilization of email in that relationship.