Many of us have received care from a nurse, perhaps while at school or at a hospital. If you have, chances are, you had a positive experience. Americans rate nurses as some of the most honest and ethical professionals! But, someone had to make sure to get the right person into that job. How did they do it? How did they make sure that the person helping you has what it takes to be a good nurse? What does it even mean to be a good nurse?
Calling Industrial-Organizational Psychologists
These types of questions are commonly addressed by Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychologists, who study behavior in the workplace. Members of this profession belong to APA’s Division 14—the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). Job analysis is an essential activity performed by I-O psychologists. During a job analysis, an I-O psychologist investigates what activities are performed as part of a given job and what qualities—commonly referred to as knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs)—an employee needs to be able to do the job well.
Nurses through an I-O Lens
A hospital may hire an I-O psychologist, or a larger team of “I-Os,” to analyze its nursing job. The team will study existing materials that describe the job and gather additional information from subject matter experts—hospital employees who are knowledgeable about the job.
As part of the job analysis process, the I-Os may:
- Shadow a nurse for a day, asking a lot of “why” and “how” questions
- Meet with current nurses at the hospital to generate a list of their job duties
- Talk to nurses’ supervisors to generate a list of KSAOs nurses need to perform each of their duties
- Ask a group of supervisors to rate the importance of each KSAO for the performance of each job duty
How important are each of the listed KSAOs for a nurse’s ability to perform each of the listed duties?
|
|
KSAO | ||
| Duty | Knowledge of Medicine | Service Orientation | Speaking Clearly |
| Maintain accurate and detailed records | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Administer medications and monitor patients for reactions | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| Record patients’ medical information and vital signs | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Monitor, record, and report changes in patients’ symptoms | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Coordinate with team members to plan and evaluate patient care | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Average | 3.8 | 2.8 |
2.2 |
Data Goes In, Recommendations Come Out
Using the ratings they collect during the job analysis, I-Os can use statistics to determine the most important KSAOs for nurses working at the hospital. Let’s say their analyses result in the table above. It shows that knowledge of medicine and service orientation are rated more highly across nurses’ duties than speaking clearly. So, what do I-O psychologists do with this information?
This information can be used as the basis for recommending that hospital management select nurse job candidates who have good knowledge of medicine and are service-oriented. I-O psychologists would then proceed to suggest assessments that can be used to measure nurse candidates’ levels of these KSAOs. Examples of assessments include licensure exams, personality tests, job simulations, and interviews to name a few. I-O psychologists have the training to design new job candidate assessments or to recommend existing assessments that would help the hospital hire good nurses. For more on this topic, read our blog about I-O psychologists bringing assessments to the NFL!
But, wait! If the idea that all it takes to be a good nurse is knowledge of medicine and service orientation strikes you as too simple, read on.
Wrangling with Job Analysis in the “Real World”
The sample job analysis process and results considered above are a greatly simplified version of reality. Nurses have more than just five duties and require a broad set of attributes to be good at their jobs! There are also many types of nurses, so their duties and required KSAOs will differ. For example, visit the government’s database of U.S. occupations to see the long list of KSAOs that make for a good registered nurse!
There are also many ways to conduct a job analysis and I-O psychologists frequently need to get creative on how to approach a given situation. Balancing the need for reliable and useful job analysis data with various practical limitations is not easy.
Consider these challenges:
- How do you reconcile disagreements between job experts about the requirements of the same job?
- How do you get enough information about a job performed by very few current employees?
- How do you analyze a job that one year from now will not look the way it does today?
A degree in I-O psychology will arm you with the tools to tackle these challenges. With a future career in I-O, you may be one of the job analysts who define what it takes to be a good nurse in 2038!
