Health care quality is nursing professionals’ most vital objective, directly affecting treatment outcomes and patient satisfaction. To provide patients with quality health care, nurses should maintain high-level competence, knowledge, skills, and attitudes defining their professional performance. Measuring nursing performance allows determining how to enhance care quality and which factors and tools affect the efficiency of health care professionals.
Factors from Performance Reviews That Motivate Staff
Performance appraisals’ reviews allow nursing staff to identify how their efficiency can be improved, which helps them stay motivated. Bigdeli et al. (2019) state that nurses’ performance appraisal interview resulted in “an increase in nurses’ specific scores” and enhancement of “the quantity and quality of their work, knowledge and professional skills”. Appraisals’ reviews contribute to nurses’ motivation and improved efficiency within empowerment and determining weaknesses that can be eliminated.
Constructive and Assertive Feedback
Constructive and assertive feedback is a crucial tool in developing nurses’ performance. Feedback allows health care professionals to “gather information, consolidate their awareness of strengths and areas to improve, and aims to support effective behaviour” (Hardavella et al., 2017). Feedback may be provided by nurses, patients, or other members of the complex medical interdisciplinary team. The ability to correctly perceive it and draw conclusions contributes to performance enhancement.
Coaching as a Tools for Professional Growth
The coaching approach is beneficial for nurses in terms of continuation of learning, team building, problem-solving, adapting to changes, and defining best practices. Coaches’ assistance to the performance evaluation allows setting expectations and directions for productivity improvement and professional growth. The coaching model implies detecting weaknesses, sharing suggestions, and implementing plans for dealing with feebles. Coaches’ follow-up and supportive attitudes contribute to nurses’ professional and performance development.
Data Gathered Systematically in a Fair and Objective Manner
Nursing involves collecting a lot of information about patients, treatments, medications, and other aspects of health care. It is essential to collect that data systematically to prevent possible negative consequences for patient health. The lack of systematicity, fairness, and objectivity in collecting and gathering information leads to medical errors that interfere with patient safety and, therefore, poor nursing performance.
Develop Awareness of Biases
Unconscious and implicit biases among nurses negatively affect health care professionals’ performance resulting in poor health care quality. Unconscious biases may relate to gender, race, ethnic group, or sexual orientation, and the presence of such implicit prejudgments leads to health disparities for patients (Joseph, 2018). Development of bias awareness may occur within specific patient-orienteered training for nurses, multidisciplinary feedback, and digital innovations such as checklists. Building bias awareness is vital to deliver quality care and improve performance.
References
Bigdeli, A., Adel-Mehraban, M., & Namnabati, M. (2019). The effect of the appraisal interview on nurses’ performance in neonatal intensive care units. Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, 24(6), 428–431.
Hardavella, G., Aamli-Gaagnat, A., Saad, N., Rousalova, I., & Sreter, K. B. (2017). How to give and receive feedback effectively. Breathe, 13(4), 327–333.
Joseph, P. (2018). Eliminating disparities and implicit bias in health care delivery by utilizing a hub-and-spoke model. Research Ideas and Outcomes, 4, e26370.