Total Quality Management and hospital nursing: an integrative literature review

Objective: to identify the available evidence in the literature on Total Quality Management in nursing administration. Method: integrative literature review of full text articles in Portuguese, English and Spanish, published between 2000 and 2011 in the LILACS, MEDLINE, SciELO and PubMed databases. Results: the sample comprises 24 periodical articles grouped by the following thematic categories: Theoretical assumptions; Practical application and Quality indicators. Despite the criticism of models derived from classic administration theories, experiences of success with the deployment of TQM have already marked the health and nursing setting in Brazil. Conclusion: Total Quality Management in managing of nursing care has being fully used in some health institutions, while others have adopted several of its principles. Two of the twenty four articles are intervention studies, which characterizes the necessity for clinical research in this area.