Introduction. Head nurses are responsible for the monitoring and analysis of changes taking place in the sector of nursing care. The managerial staff should analyse, then adapt and implement into practice, standards, procedures and tools which would provide the nursing/obstetric services with competitiveness. It is important that a basis for success, including nursing and obstetric care, should be an appriopriate strategy preceded by the use of strategic analysis.

Objective. The objective of the study was the presentation of strengths and weaknesses in the sector of nursing/obstetric services, as well as opportunities and threats in the environment in hospitals of three levels of reference.

Material and methods. The method of strategic analysis applied in the study was SWOT analysis. SWOT is a standardised tool for the analysis of data concerning the past and the future, in order to identify internal strengths and weaknesses of an organization, as well as opportunities and threats in its external environment. The study was carried out by the technique of a survey, the research tool was a questionnaire form designed for the needs of SWOT analysis. The study covered 13 hospitals of the fi rst level of reference, 8 hospitals of the second reference level, and 3 hospitals of the third reference level. The study group were 289 nursing managerial staff members. The traits examined were subject to statistical analysis: χ2 test for uniformity, χ2 test for independence, while adopting the conclusion error of 5%, and associated with it the level of signifi cance p≤0.05.

Results. The study showed that the strength of nursing/ obstetric care was making decisions concerning a wide range of services provided by this occupational group; the weakness – lack of fi nancial resources for employee motivation benefi ts, the opportunity – a successful cooperation with the hospital board of managers, while the risk – the increasing inequalities in population’s income. Conclusions. The nursing managerial staff does not systematically apply strategic analyses, and the respondents who use these methods most frequently chose SWOT analysis