Question: Planning an Employee's First Performance Appraisal Mrs. Jones is a new LVN/LPN and has been working the 3 PM to 11 PM shift on the long-term care unit where you are the evening charge nurse. It is time for her 3-month performance appraisal. In your facility, each employee's job description is used as the standard of measure for performance appraisal. Essentially, you believe that Mrs. Jones is performing her job well, but you are somewhat concerned because she still relies on the RNs even for minor patient care decisions. Although you are glad that she does not act completely on her own, you would like to see her become more independent. The patients have commented favorably to you on Mrs. Jones's compassion and on her follow-through on all their requests and needs. Mrs. Jones gets along well with the other LVNs/LPNs, and you sometimes believe that they take advantage of her hard-working and pleasant nature. On a few occasions, you believe that they inappropriately delegated some of their work to her. When preparing for Mrs. Jones's upcoming evaluation, what can you do to make the appraisal as objective as possible? You want Mrs. Jones's fi rst evaluation to be growth producing.

ASSIGNMENT: Plan how you will proceed. What positive forces are already present in this scenario? What negative forces will you have to overcome? Support your plan with readings from the Bibliography at the end of this chapter.