Peer Evaluations

Nurses General Nursing

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how many of you work in hospitals where they have institued (or have always done) peer evaluations as a part of your annual evaluation?

personally, having just gone through my annual evaluation, it is painfully obvious to me that the "peer evaluation tool" is nothing more than a personality contest. the thought that a personality conflict can affect my job security or my percentage of raise raises my hackles more than a little bit.

do many of you have this "tool" in use in your hospitals, and if so, do you find them to be similar to what i describe? or are they instead, valuable tools of reliable information from your peers?

thank you for your input.

eta: i just wanted to mention that the peer evals are handed out to both rn's and techs. so the techs are evaluating our performance as rn's, and whether or not we meet "competency" or not.. ?? weird.

Specializes in ICU/PCU/Infusion.

My experience with peer evals this year was a mixed bag, as could be expected by my post. I had several that were fine, and one that offered some constructive "needs improvement in xxxx areas" (which is of course true, I'm just over my first year of nursing!), but there was one review in which I was given "not competent" in every single category, which absolutely is a personality clash and nothing more (and I tend to believe is from a tech, since no other nurse on the floor could possibly think that any one of us RN's are incompetent at every single level of skill and maintain our position), but there was one that included extremely hurtful personal remarks that had nothing to do with whether or not I do a good job at work.

I won't go into the comment here, but suffice to say that this person and I (and I did recognize her handwriting, and did confront her about her review in a professional way until I was reduced to tears in my passion) hardly work together, which I think is another problem with the peer evals. I was evaluated by a charge nurse with whom I rarely work, on a weekend day when I was working an EXTRA day, not with my normal "team", and evaluated by the different team. How crazy!

Anyway, I did receive my merit raise, and overall had an excellent eval, it was just the peer evals I was aghast at. It shocked me that I was able to not only see the reviews myself, but to recognize the handwriting and see what this person sees in me that really couldn't be further from the truth. When I look into my mirror at home, I can honestly say that I am not the person she thinks I am, nor do I behave in the manner in which she wrote.

What makes it worse is that the RN in question is a relief charge nurse, and when I confronted her about her comments, I explained to her that as a charge, if she saw areas in which I need improvement or am doing something that could be construed as inappropriate, she would be better off coming to me at that time rather than waiting until year's end and back stabbing me with off the wall comments. As a supervisory person, I would certainly give my employees some feedback if the situation were reversed.

ugh. I guess this will all blow over, and I just needed to vent.

Oh, and as for the remark about how the peer evals are to measure your personal relationships with your peers, there is only one box to check "yes" or "no" with regard to teamwork. The rest has to do with competency with regard to cust. service, skill levels, problem solving, analytical thinking, etc. Hardly a personal relationship tool.

That's how a lot of us felt, Leslasic. Isn't it sad that though most of yours were very positive and should have given you motivation to continue working as hard as you were, the one you can't stop thinking about it the negative? You're absolutely right to confront the person who wrote the negatives and to ask them to talk to you about problems that they see immediately, rather than waiting for the evaluation.

It's great to get feedback from your peers...it holds a lot more weight coming from someone you respect and work side by side with everyday....but the feedback shouldn't be anonymous. If someone has something constructive to say to you, they should stand behind it and sign their name to it. Management wouldn't give us an evaluation and say the person who wrote this is afraid to sign their name....why should our peers be able to hide their identities? If it's a positive and you respect that peer...it means a lot! If it's a negative and you respect that peer...you'll probably really work to fix that problem. But if you don't respect that peer, the mean, unproductive shots they take at you can be shrugged off.

As far as Peer Evaluations being a measure of how successful you've been at developing good interpersonal relationships with your co-workers...that's only true to a certain degree. Some co-workers may not be as motivated or show initiative as much as others and may resent the extra effort that's made. This can come out by telling these hard-working co-workers that they're bossy or too hyper when the employees are really just doing the job as it should be done and trying to get others to pull their weight.

Specializes in ER.

Don't ever work for Susquehanna Health System in PA because peer evals are 90% of your eval, and you are not allowed to see them. You are told in your eval by your evaluator that so and so was said, end of discussion. You have no opprtunity to explain or justify, so if somwone has a personal issue with you you never know who it is. The most toxic environment I ever worked in. I currently work in another ER and work the Med director from SHS 2 times a month and he, doesn't get involved with it since it is a process in place for nurses only.

Peer evals should be done by the staff you work with on a regular basis. Too many facilities allow this type of eval to become a popularity eval instead of a genuine assessment and improvement tool.

Specializes in CNA, Surgical, Pediatrics, SDS, ER.

We also do peer evals where I work. RN's are evaled by CNA's, CHUC's, day staff that you never work w/ (if your on nocs that is) and vice versa. I also don't think that they are an effective judgement of your skills. I believe that for some it's really easy to judge a person's character and not how they are as a nurse. In nursing their are always those people you just don't click w/ and they are not exactly the person you want evaling you because it's too easy to let personal feeling get in the way.

I just switched to the ER few mo. ago and I was barely off orientation and got 3 peer evals. I sent them back to my director and said I have not worked with these people long enough to give feedback on them. I thought that it was ridiculous that I even got them in the first place. The girls I work w/ said that they never say anything bad about eachother, unless of course it was something major because you don't want to give our director that kind of power over her staff. I've heard that she does not keep it confidential and she will try to pit staff against eachother. Now that I've been there a few months I can see why they said that. She's on a major power trip but that's a whole other thread.

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