Riglyne vir personeelevaluering van middelvlak-verpleegbestuur

Abstract

Personnel evaluation is one of the human resource management practices which poses high demands and challenges to management because the value of human work achievement has to be determined. Because work achievement cannot readily be quantified, this might lead to subjectivity in the personnel evaluation system and lead to negativity among staff. This negative experience of personnel evaluation can negatively influence the professional and personal growth of personnel, which is part of the quest to achieve wholeness. It would appear as if middle-level nursing managers who place a certain value judgment on their personnel evaluation, experience negative feelings and respond to this vociferously because the personnel evaluation does not focus on the whole person. This study had the aim of investigating and describing the experiences of middle-level nursing managers in a hospital with regard to personnel evaluation and to provide guidelines for professional and personal growth as part of the quest to facilitate wholeness. A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive contextual study was done with the purpose of obtaining insight into and w1derstanding of the above experience of middle-level nursing managers. A phenomenological method of individual interviewing was used for the collection of data. A purposeful and convenient sampling of nine (9) middle-level nursing mangers in control of hospitals which complied with all the stated criteria was included in the study. During the interviews the researcher asked the partipants one central question, viz. "How do you experience your own personnel evaluation and its results?" The interviews were taped and transcribed verbatim. Field notes were also made immediately after the interviews in order to render the researcher's subjective impressions of the interviews.

A combination of Kerlinger and Giorgi's methods of content analysis was used to analyse the data, together with concensus discussions with an independent encoder for the confirmation of dataprocessmg. In this study it was found that middle-level nursing mangers in control of hospitals described only internal experiences, predominantly psychological experiences with regard to personnel evaluation, which influenced their professional and personal growth as part of the quest for wholeness. The interaction between the negative perceptions of personnel evaluation, viz. unfairness, invalidity, dishonesty and emotional experiences, such as anger, anxiety and sadness, had the result that middle-level nursing managers experienced evaluation as demotivating. Recommendations were made through the positing of general operationalization possiblities of the study, as applicable to teaching, research and practice, and as specific guidelines for personnel evaluation of middle-level nursing managers to enable them to eliminate or minimize negative internal psychological experiences with regard to personnel evaluation. It is felt that if evaluators follow the guidelines provided in the study, middle-level nursing managers can facilitate professional and personal growth as part of the quest towards wholeness.