RN Clinical Educator

Job Title: RN Clinical Educator 

Supervised by: Chief Nursing Officer

Description of Position:

This position will serve as a consultant, role model, change agent, mentor, collaborator, and facilitator of learning. They are responsible for planning, scheduling, monitoring, and documenting staff development activities of all clinical employees. This includes orientation, in-service training, annual competency requirements, and professional development activities. This position ensures educational outcomes are measurable and aligned with the design and planning of programming.

Key Responsibilities

• Education: Education is designed to improve professional practice and provision of quality patient care. To accomplish this goal, the clinical educator will design educational activities to address practice gaps for identified target audiences, which may include licensed and non-licensed healthcare personnel. These activities are developed to achieve specific outcomes related to identified deficits or opportunities for improvement in knowledge, skill, or practice.
• Assessment of Practice Gaps: Prioritizes department and hospital needs aligning hospital initiatives and environmental scanning in the community, state, national, and international level to prioritize and address practice gaps.
• Identification of Learning Needs: Assess knowledge, skill, and practice gaps within the hospital system differentiating between practice gaps, performance issues, and process/system issues.
• Outcomes Identification: Ensures realistic, achievable outcomes created in collaboration with key stakeholders and subject matter experts.
• Planning: Determines appropriate interventions incorporating theories pertaining to learning, behavioral change, and motivation. Analyzes cost and anticipated return on investment for learning activities, programs, and projects determining cost effectiveness of educational methodology.
• Implementation: Demonstrates use of current evidence-based education guidelines (adult learning theory, brain-based learning, etc.) during implementation of educational programs.
• Orientation/Onboarding: Orientation is one facet of the onboarding process and is comprised of an individualized program to guide the new hire towards job competency. The clinical educator may develop, coordinate, manage, facilitate, conduct, and evaluate orientation programs for clinical personnel.
• Competency Management: Competency management is a dynamic process designed to support ongoing assessment and evaluation of performance. This responsibility requires the clinical educator to assist unit leadership teams in prioritizing competency selection and with selection of instructional strategies to meet learning objectives.
• Professional Role Development: Professional role development involves identification and development of strategies to facilitate a continuous process of maturation through lifelong learning. This type of development allows for role transition, role integration, skill acquisition, and mastery as learners advance from novice to expert in their professions and specialties.
• Research/Evidence Based Practice/Quality Improvement: The clinical educator must promote and integrate the science of nursing professional development in order to continuously improve their practice. In addition, they promote research, EBP, and QI in patient care settings. They may conduct, encourage, facilitate and/or participate in research, EBP, and QI, including dissemination of findings.
• Collaborative Partnerships: The CNE collaborates with partners to share expertise in planning and decision making to achieve the desired results. Interprofessional collaboration involves multiple healthcare personnel from different professional backgrounds collaborating to deliver the highest quality of care.
• Accountability: Creates and maintains an education file for each clinical employee for monitoring and documenting training and development of each staff member. Facilitates communication between employees and administration to ensure that orientation and training requirements are met promptly. Acts to minimize risk and ensure safety of patients and staff. Promotes strict staff observance of confidentiality and patient rights. Understands and supports hospital nursing philosophy and the hospital mission.
• Leadership: Guides, directs, motivates, and influences others. Provides positive reinforcement and feedback for improvement. Models a positive attitude towards organization. Focuses the team on teamwork to achieve goals. Understands and is sensitive to the needs of others. Sets high performance expectations and develops others by appropriate delegation.
• Decision Making: Chooses courses of action using sound and logical judgement. Optimizes information from multiple sources. Considers multiple goals, perspectives, options, and outcomes when planning. Uses intuition and insight in decision making when appropriate.
• Creativity: Creativity is the employment of originality, imagination, and inventiveness to generate innovative ideas, alternatives, or solutions. Develops new or improved methods, products, or services. Displays intellectual curiosity, and challenges conventional practices for the good of the organization.

Requirements

Knowledge and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field and graduation from an accredited school of professional nursing required.
• Master's degree in nursing is preferred.
• Must maintain current Arkansas licensure as a Registered Nurse.
• At least three (3) years' experience in a clinical, leadership, or educational role in Nursing required.
• At least five (5) years in an Acute care hospital setting in a clinical educator role preferred.
• Current knowledge of continuous quality improvement and methodology.
• Knowledge of applicable standards and regulations.
• Nursing Professional Development Certification NPD-BC – American Nurses Credentialing Center – preferred.
• Current American Heart Association BLS (Basic Life Support) upon hire required.
• Current American Heart Association ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) upon hire or within first 90 days of employment required.

Skills and Abilities

• Always maintains patient confidentiality
• Participates in quality improvement program by identifying, collecting, analyzing, and documenting the results.
• Sensitivity to and willingness to interact with persons of various social, cultural, economic, and educational backgrounds.
• Proficiency with software and/or equipment (Microsoft Office applications including Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.)
• Strong organizational skills with ability to prioritize projects, work independently, manage multiple tasks, and meet deadlines.
• Strong interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills are required.
• Teaching/presentation skills are required.
• Skilled in data collection, analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.
• Ability to work independently and take initiative when necessary.
• Good judgement, problem solving and decision-making skills.
• Demonstrated commitment to working together and possessing the skills to lead, influence, and motivate others.

Physical Requirements

• While performing the duties of this job, this position is frequently required to do the following:
• Use standard office equipment and access, input, and retrieve information from a computer. Use computer keyboard with a manual and finger dexterity and wrist-finger speed sufficient to perform repetitive actions efficiently for extended periods of time.
• Communicate effectively in person or via telephone in a way understood by those with whom the person speaks, including a diverse population.
• Give and follow verbal and written instructions with attention to detail and accuracy.
• Perform complex mental functions and basic arithmetic functions; interpret complex laws, regulations, and policies; collect, interpret, and/or analyze complex data and information.
• Vision: see details of objects at close range.
• Coordinate multiple tasks simultaneously.
• Reach forward, up, down, and to the side.
• Sit or stand for minimum periods of one hour at a time and come and go from work area repeatedly throughout the day.
• Lift up to forty (40) pounds.

This position is safety sensitive pursuant to Amendment 98 to the Arkansas Constitution 2(25). A safety sensitive position means any position in which a person performing the position while under the influence of marijuana may constitute a threat to health or safety. This position is therefore “safety sensitive” because it requires the following: performing life-threatening procedures; working with hazardous or flammable materials, controlled substances, food, or medicine; and a lapse of attention while working in this position could result in injury, illness, or death.