As nursing departments compete for their fair share of scarcer health care dollars, nursing managers must be constantly ready to justify their requests according to the impact their operations have upon the whole institution's productivity. To do this, nursing managers must be able to evaluate nursing's whole program in terms which general policy makers can grasp — whether they are health care administrators, corporate financiers or legislative ways and means committees. Therefore, a comprehensive evaluation policy has become a vital aspect of managing both inpatient and outpatient settings for delivering nursing care.Evaluation entails the application of a model of evaluation, the gathering of sources of data, and the development of conclusions and recommendations after careful analysis. In itself, evaluation is the “process' of determining value or the amount of success in achieving a predetermined objective.”1Program evaluation measures “the extent to which a program achieves its goals, the relative impact of key program variables, and the role of the program contrasted to external variables.“2Establishing an useful system requires the nurse manager to select a sound model to guide the process and foster good practices for recording and storing data.3