How to Conduct Nurse Performance Evaluations—with ExamplesIs it performance evaluation time again? How did they go for you and your nurses last time around? Did they seem constructive? Did your nurses actively participate in the conversation? Have you seen improvements over time? Stick with us as we explore the topic of nurse performance evaluations, share tips to optimize them, and provide some examples.
Performance evaluations for nurses are in-depth assessments of a nurse’s performance on the job. They cover a range of components (performance requirements) that can be quantified and rated. Furthermore, they provide the structure and the setting for nurses and their supervisors to identify, specify, and discuss strengths and areas for improvement.
Implementing performance evaluations of your nurses is an essential factor in strengthening nurse retention. Nursing turnover has been studied extensively, and among the commonly cited reasons, career advancement/career plateau and feeling undervalued—in particular—can be connected to performance evaluations.
Performance evaluations can provide guidance, assurance, and appreciation to nurses. Additionally, performance evaluation goals are established, providing them with concrete expectations to reach for.
When your nursing evaluations are perceived as opportunities for growth and invite nurse participation, you are taking steps to establish a work culture where nurses feel valued, where nurses feel supported, and where nurses are invited to take steps to advance their careers within your healthcare facility, all of which can aid nurse retention and combat the staffing crisis.
So, how do you ensure your performance evaluations are perceived as growth opportunities? These evaluations require an investment of your time; it’s a worthy investment because having motivated, confident, and competent nurses working for you has a ripple effect impacting work culture, retention, turnover, patient outcomes, and more. Here, we’ve compiled a list of five tips to help your nurse performance evaluations be balanced and effective.
Know your nurses beyond the numbers and seek to show it by giving customized feedback. Take the time to observe them occasionally, and consider what patients and other clinicians say about them—the bad and the good. Including specific examples to illustrate feedback shows your nurses that they are not just numbers to the facility; it shows them that they are seen.
Review their prior performance evaluation while writing the current one. This will help you identify improvements that you may have missed. Recognizing their progress and providing encouragement shows them that their effort to improve was worthwhile and can increase their motivation.
Nurses looking for career advancement will appreciate the opportunity to share their goals. By becoming aware of their goals, you can—at the very least—make a note to recruit them when advanced positions open up within your facility; moreover, you can help guide them to meet those goals by connecting them to resources, programs, and initiatives within the facility. A shortage of nurse leadership in healthcare facilities stresses your newer nurses. Performance evaluations can be used as strategic tools to raise your nurses up within your facility and help you have more experienced nurses on staff, which will benefit new nurses.
Do more than give a rating and critique for the areas needing improvement. Please take the opportunity to ask for their own reflections on the identified areas. By reviewing their progress and improvements first, you’ve set the tone that this part of the evaluation is not to invite feelings of failure and shame. After all, you’ve just shown them that you noticed their growth. Identify a plan of actionable steps they can take to improve.
Don’t leave your nurses hanging until the next performance review. Set reminders to follow up with them individually and track their progress on the plan.
Not all nurse performance evaluation templates include space for writing; many are sentences with columns for you to select their rating. If that’s the case for your facility, we encourage you to write your observations on a separate piece of paper to share with your nurses.
So, you’re ready to sit down and write nurse performance evaluations, and the cursor blinks on a blank page? Here are some examples to jump-start your writing:
Specific, personalized feedback examples:
Recognize progress and improvement examples:
Areas for improvement examples:
Many nurses feel overwhelmed by high patient ratios due to staffing shortages and vacancies, which can negatively impact their performance.
Lighten the burden, grow your nursing staff, and cultivate motivated, experienced, and happy nurses by providing effective performance evaluations and using the short-term staffing solution of per diem nurses and nursing assistants to fill shift gaps. Read our “Nursa Can Help You Fill Critical Shifts Fast” guide to get started.
