title: Practical implications of pre-employment nurse assessments.
abstract: Hiring nurses is a difficult task that can have serious repercussions for medical facilities. If nurses without proper skills are hired, patients can suffer from insufficient quality of care and potentially life-threatening conditions. Nurse applicants' technical knowledge is extremely important to avoid negative outcomes; however, there are soft skills that factor into their success, such as bedside manner, personality, communication, and decision making. In order for medical facilities to select and maintain high-performing nurse staff, hiring managers must incorporate evaluations for these types of skills in their hiring process. The current study focused on using content/criterion-related validation design to create assessments by which nurse applicants can be evaluated for both technical knowledge/skills and soft skills. The study included participation of more than 876 nursing staff members. To rank applicants on divergent skills, 3 assessment types were investigated, resulting in the creation of an assessment with 3 components. The clinical, situational, and behavioral components that were created measure applicants' job knowledge, interpersonal competency in medical facility-related situations, and aspects of personality and behavior, respectively. Results indicate that using the assessment can predict 45% of a nurse applicant's future job performance. Practical implications include hiring and maintaining a higher quality of nurses and decreased hiring costs.
authors: Biddle Consulting Group, Inc, Folsom, California, USA. jkuthy@biddle.com
authors: James E
authors: JE
authors: Kuthy
authors: Cheree
authors: C
authors: Ramon
authors: Ronald
authors: R
authors: Gonzalez
authors: Dan A
authors: DA
authors: Biddle
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D009726:Nurses / Q000592:standards*; D009740:Nursing Staff / Q000592:standards; D010551:Personality; D010560:Personnel Selection / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards