SummaryFirst-line nurse managers play a critical management role because they greatly influence the success of healthcare, organizational effectiveness, staff nurse autonomy and job satisfaction and increase unit productivity and improve unit culture. (Cameron-BThe first line-manager as an operational definition is the person to whom all others turn when problem arise ,she has the responsibility for all aspects of unit operations, manages the day-to-day clinical care. She is the planner, organizer ,motivator, evOn the other hand, Improving nursing productivity has become a high priority for all first line managers, so, there are two possible points at which productivity gains may be made: the first, through changes in the use of inputs which include the raw mateThe purpose of the present study was to identify the effect of first-line management functions on productivity of unit personnel through:-Assessing the perception of head nurses about ranking order of management function.Montioring head nurses individual actual time allocated to each function.Measure unit productivity.Find out relationship between performance of first-line management function and productivity of unit personnelThe study was conducted in a sixteen general medical and surgical units at Mansoura University Hospital (1750 beds) from July (2003) to January (2004).The total sample of this study consists of three groups of subjects .The first group included all first-Four tools used for data collection .The first tool was Managerial functions sheet developed by revision of literature and modified by 7 expertise from 5 different universities, to identify the perception of first-line managers about consuming their time The second tool was observational checklist using the same items in the previous tool to estimate the actual time spent by first-line managers in management functions.The third tool was Nursing Activity observation study sheet to estimate the amount of time that nurses devoted to various activities this tool originally developed by Department of Health Education and Welfare .The fourth tool was patient Classification Assessment sheet developed by Nassar to classify patients into four care groups.Data were collected by the researcher and 16 trained observers who were nurse intense from the Faculty of Nursing.Data were collected by regular observation every 15 minutes of all nursing personnel assigned to work in the selected units for six consecutive days.This sheets contained the various nursing activities needed by the patient and a standardized time value of each activity. This sheet was used to determine the direct nursing care required by patients.To assess patients a numerical score was given that quantified direct nursing care needed by patients. An experimental study was conducted prior to actual data collection to develop criteria for classifying patients .The criteria considered by the researcPatient mobility dependency, consciousness degree, treatment and procedure, monitoring, feeding, bathing and personnel hygiene dependency. Patients were classified into four groups namely; Self care group, partial care group, intermediate care group, and To determine the productivity of unit personnel, divide the total required time (direct + indirect) by patients on the total actual time spent in giving the care (direct +indirect), the standard to measure productivity was from 85% to 115 %.Furthermore, to identify the effect of managerial functions on productivity ,correlation done by statistical analysis.