Yes, our facility is still using the Performance-Based Data Systems to "screen" all the new nurses. I found out that this system was developed by a nurse with a PhD. Our unit educator states that this testing system is "research based with high veracity and reliability." She says it is useful to screen out the nurses who may be a threat to patient safety. I, for one, have big doubts. It troubles me that nurses are being judged by this "standard," when the scenarios themselves are so ambiguous and open to interpretation. I know of a wonderful LPN with excellent clinical skills and broad-based nursing knowledge and experience who was rejected by our hospital because she didn't "make the score" with PBDS. Now she is happily employed at a smaller hospital, and it is our hospital's big loss. The testers are looking for very specific answers in each of these hundred or so video tapes; however, who is to say that their "answers" are any better than something else you or I might come up with. The whole concept of nurses being tested in such an arbitrary way really bothers me. We still lack so much control over our practice environment. To make matters worse, we desperately need nurses in our unit--we just had five quit "out of the blue" and our nurse manager is resorting to travelers. Well, guess what, half of the travelers she was counting on to fill the "holes" flunked the test. Some of the new grads couldn't cut it either and so quit the unit after three months of orientation. I am scratching my head over this one. The worse nursing shortage since WWII, and turning desperately needed nurses away.
