Peer Evals

[akrn70]

Was wondering if anyone is doing peer evaluations and if so how your process works. Are they done once a year? Who chooses who does them? Do you do them on each nurse? Do you feel this is an accurate and appropriate way to evaluate staff? What have been the pro's/con's of them?

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

my unit uses anonymous peer reviews. the person being reviewed picks three people and the evaluator picks 5. the remarks are cut and pasted into a new document so the person has no idea who said what. the pros are, if used fairly, you get a pretty clear idea of what your coworkers think of you and what you're doing that irritated people. but all too often, people use it as a place to vent all of their frustrations about someone. then they don't have to sign their name, so you cannot go back and talk to them about it.

[ozoneranger]

I worked on a unit where we did peer evaluations. The CNA's were allowed to evaluate the nurses, so...if you got on the bad side of a CNA...they'd all sit down in the conference room with their eval's & gang up on you. Since the eval's were anon. it couldn't be verified if the person who wrote the thing ever even worked with you.

They'd go to Kinko's to make copies of the blank form so they could all take a shot at you. (mgmt finally caught on that more responses were coming in- than forms were sent out....did the math & numbered the forms to prevent it from happening again....)

We had one CNA that was without a doubt, the strangest person I've ever met (and that's sayin' a lot...) she got it in her head to go after a nurse she didn't like & it cost the nurse her raise.

Even after we pointed out that CNA's don't understand why we do what we do, yet were allowed to critique our performance was like allowing a nurse to evaluate a structural engineer......hell-o, to no avail....

They never did change the policy, but karma did win. The CNA's decided they didn't like the supervisor that put the policy in place.......and used the evaluations to get her fired.

You gotta love that karma......

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

We do peer evals where I work, and I have to say that I completely disagree with them. They're more of a popularity contest than a true measure of how we do on the job. We can submit up to 5 names, but that doesn't guarantee that those are the people who will do it. Some of the comments that I've gotten made absolutely no sense, and half the evals I'm supposed to do are people I never work with because they're on other shifts.

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

@ozoneranger...in the scenarios you described, were the CNAs ever evaluated by the LPNs or RNs under this same policy?

[simboka]

Evals are yearly. Three parts to them: charge nurse eval, self eval, and peer eval. For peer evals: mgmt sets up a few of 3-4hr blocks, everybody signs up a block which makes 3-4 nurses per block. Mgmt chooses 2-4 nurses for those nurses to eval, we go through our eval outline and give rankings and rationales for each point. Same points and evals for self eval and charge nurse evals. They're supposed to be anon, but you usually find out who eval'ed you, but individual comments are anon.

[llg, PhD, RN]

My hospital is starting to reconsider peer review -- instittuting it again after abandoning it many years ago because of the types of reasons mentioned above.

Some of the newer literature is suggesting alternatives, such as having group discussions of case reviews. As people review the chosen case together, they discuss what was done well, what could have been done better, etc. The fact that it is focused on a case helps keep it focused on doing the best for the patient and the fact that it is not anonomous keeps it civil and professional.

It's different than than the old peer review methods, but it still incorporates peer review principles, gives people some feedback/input from their colleagues, etc. But it avoids a lot of the previous method's problems.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

we do peer evals where i work, and i have to say that i completely disagree with them. they're more of a popularity contest than a true measure of how we do on the job. we can submit up to 5 names, but that doesn't guarantee that those are the people who will do it. some of the comments that i've gotten made absolutely no sense, and half the evals i'm supposed to do are people i never work with because they're on other shifts.

that's pretty much how things work for us. they're a popularity contest, and the people who pass out and compile the peer evaluations, even though they're supposed to be nonbiased, do play favorites. we had one nurse who really knew her stuff but was an absolute nightmare to work with . . . if she decided she didn't like you, she just wouldn't help you out, wouldn't talk to you, etc. i know she was going through a tough time -- husband cheating on her, divorce and custody battle and all -- but she was absolutely miserable to work with. i couldn't understand how she kept getting promotions and raises. then i discovered that her evaluator was passing out the peer eval forms, saying "hortense is having a really tough time, and i wanted to give these to those who would judge her a little less harshly than some."

every time the subject comes up, i make the point that peer evaluations are meaningless as evaluation tools unless the evaluator has to stand behind them. meaning they cannot be anonymous. so far, i'm in the minority but my votes keep growing.

[oramar]

I worked at two institutions that did peer evals. Both of them allowed the person to suggest 3 names to do their evals and then management picked from the list. For some reason, people always put me on their list which means I ended up do about a hundred over the years.

[HappydayRn]

We hand out our own to our coworkers. They are not anonymous. Mine were a huge morale boost, as I new nurse I am very hard on myself and seeing that my coworkers think I'm solid and like working with me was a huge deal. I had been toying with the idea of leaving after my year was up. After my evals though I felt like I could make it and now when I work I am a much more positive person.

My manager even told me they can be useful as a retention tool for newer nurses. However I'm not sure how things would have played out if they had been negative.

[Pepper The Cat, BSN, RN]

We use peer evaluations. The person gets to chose who to evaluate her. I think its worthless. Some people just pick their best friends who all say that that person is excellent, a joy to work with etc, etc. They don't point out faults (and we all have our faults) that could be improved on. Management does not get a true picture of the person's strenghths/ weaknesses etc.