Opinion ID: 760462
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Responsibly Directing Other Employees

Text: 19 VIP also argues that the field nurses responsibly direct the work of the HHAs. VIP offers three bases for this conclusion--the field nurses formulate the HHA plans of care, they tell HHAs to perform certain tasks and show them how to do so correctly when improvement is needed, and they complete bi-weekly evaluation forms. The Regional Director found that any direction given by the nurses does not involve independent judgment, the second of the three requirements in the statutory definition of supervisor. The record supports this conclusion. 20 With respect to the HHA plans of care, nurses are involved in writing them, but substantial evidence demonstrates that they act within a framework established by the patient's doctor. Further, one of the nurses testified that the plans are reviewed by the nursing coordinators. Even though to some degree a field nurse's own judgment is relevant in the creation of a plan, substantial evidence shows that the judgment of others figures much more prominently, rendering the nurse's role primarily a routine one. See Beverly Enterprises-Pennsylvania, Inc., 129 F.3d at 1270 (If an individual's discretion with respect to ... statutory factors is tightly constrained, then her exercise of that authority is 'routine' and does not involve 'independent judgment.' ). 21 With respect to assigning and demonstrating specific tasks to the HHAs, we have previously held that this basic task is also routine. In Beverly, we considered a situation in which a nurse might tell a nursing assistant to monitor[ ] vital signs more frequently or clean[ ] up a mess. Id. We upheld the Board's determination that such direction of an assistant was merely routine. Id. The types of discrete tasks that the field nurses have acknowledged they sometimes do are comparable. As the Regional Director noted, it only takes common sense if a patient is not properly cleaned or dressed to then instruct the aide to rectify the situation. J.A. at 33. The Regional Director properly called the nurses' role in this area routine. 22 With respect to the bi-weekly evaluation forms, the field nurses testified, essentially, that they do not take great care in filling them out. 9 They explained that they do not base their ratings on regular monitoring of the HHA over the two week period. In lieu of a real inquiry into the HHA's work and skills, the nurses explained that they make a quick, impressionistic judgment at the moment when they are filling out the form. We think it within the Board's discretion in interpreting the phrase independent judgment to treat it as excluding such unstudied appraisals. The lack of any not satisfactory or not met ratings on the many forms in the record also suggests that completion of the forms is perceived as a routine duty. 23 Mid-America Care Found. v. NLRB, 148 F.3d 638 (6th Cir.1998), does not convince us otherwise. In that case the fact that the nurses completed evaluation forms for assistants was an important reason for the court's rejection of the Board's finding that the nurses were not supervisors, see id. at 641, but filling out the forms there required much greater precision; assistants were rated in forty-one categories on a fourpoint scale. See id. at 640. Nurses were also required to recommend dismissal, continuation, or other action with respect to the assistant on the form, and three disciplinary recommendations resulted in automatic termination. See id. No evidence shows that the forms completed by VIP field nurses here play any such significant role, as the attitude of the nurses toward their completion convincingly indicated. 24