As the regulatory requirements continue to increase, the need for 360 degree evaluations has emerged as a part of JCAHO certification. The concept is that those who do evaluations of their staff should also be evaluated by their staff. In the case of CRNAs it means that the anesthetist should be evaluating the supervising Anesthesiologist. Wilma Gillis from Madison Wisconsin is facing this issue in her department and wrote the following for CRNAs who read procrna.com. Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.
Hey friends,
I am canvassing a few department leaders preliminarily who work in management or in large institutions to see what your place of employment does about this “new” and controversial concept for implementing 360 degree evaluation of ALL team members. Does your institution have a way for its CRNAs to evaluate the anesthesiologists?
To give you some background on this, twice we in our group decided this would be an important contribution to our concerns. We wrote a tool over the last years and it was shut down by our administration due to absolute fury by several anesthesiologists. The aspects of performance included in this tool had nothing to do with evaluating their medical practice. It revolved around things that were important to harmonious, collaborative practice.
Now JCAHO is mandating the idea after several years of hinting at it. I am very interested in learning of your various departmental evaluation processes and tools. If any of you have given evaluations to anesthesiologists, how did it go? Repercussions?
Wilma Gillis.
Currently we do not evaluate the Anesthesiologists but our Department Chair is in favor of doing so. Based on the posting above, I have asked our CRNAs to submit the items that they would like to evaluate related to the Anesthesiologists. We will develop an evaluation tool and present it to the Department Chair. If any readers have experience, please offer it. I would also be interested in a copy of your evaluation form. Send it to tom@procrna.com
Regarding evaluations of senior staff: items for considerations should include – is the person collegial and professionally supportive? DO they value our contributions to case management? Do they value our professional worth?
Developing an evaluation tool requires a careful thought process and that this be
objective in all respects. One way is to make each item to be evaluated measurable.
The area that we can take a look into is how our services are being charged. Since
we are medically directed, I suggest that amongst other things, we can start on the
requisites for such. Thank you.
We have developed an evaluation tool that has yet to be implemented. It grades the Anesthesiologists on a scale of 1-5 in the following areas:
communication
Approchability
Availability
Character
Leadership
Department policy/protocol
I look forward to hearing about what others are doing regarding evaluations for Anesthesiologists.