Exploring the structure of decision-making in health care managers during the COVID-19 crisis: A content analysis

BACKGROUND: Dealing with crises in the current era requires a fundamental change in science and technology, consumption patterns, and people's relationship patterns, which demands new strategies, alternatives, and administrative methods to deal with different realities of life. Due to the severe outcome of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, governments had to intensify their efforts to deal with this disease and make decisions to manage the crisis and its extreme economic, health, and educational consequences. This qualitative study was conducted in 2023 and aimed to explain the healthcare executives' decision-making structure in the COVID-19 crisis. METHODS: This qualitative study was conducted using content analysis method. 14 managers working in health and treatment sectors of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran were selected with purposeful sampling in 2023. A semi-structured interview was used to collect data. The conventional content analysis method was used to analyze the data. RESULTS: The results led to the extraction of 3 main categories, seven sub-categories, and 16 primary categories. The executives had made decisions, based on their point of view, to deal with COVID-19 in pre-crisis (including the sub-categories of crisis initiation signal recognition, preparing to resist the crisis, and preventing the geographical spread), during-crisis (preventing the crisis damage, limiting the crisis injuries), and post-crisis (including sub-categories of recovery of management and guidance systems and learning from the experiences) phases. CONCLUSION: Based on the results of this study, scientific management and the characteristic of leadership over people can be a way forward for healthcare managers to organize in crises.