Clinical Nurse Educator - Surgery Support

About the role

The Clinical Nurse Educator leads the coordination and delivery of unit-specific clinical and operational education for Surgery Support staff, fostering a culture of excellence in quality care, patient safety, and professional practice. Supporting a large, multidisciplinary team of nurses and CNAs across diverse clinical roles, this position serves as a trusted education and practice expert, driving orientation, competency validation, continuing education, and professional development initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Affords responsibility for the area specific orientation of new employees working side by side providing direct patient care as needed.
• Creates an orientation program for each role in the clinical area.
• Collaborates with respective clinical director/supervisor to counsel/coach new employees during orientation to assist the orientee’s progress towards gaining competency in unit standards/skills.
• Supports the preceptor role by collaborating with the preceptor to select appropriate assignments and learning experiences for new staff.
• Works with the Nurse Educator in coordination of staff education processes through the development, implementation, and evaluation of education materials/systems.
• Works with leadership to identify new diagnosis and procedures, develops education and specific care plans related to patient diagnosis, as applicable.
• Collaborates with appropriate resources (i.e. leadership team, other educators, content experts, organization development) to analyze needs and develop, implement, evaluate and maintain unit specific education programs (i.e. orientation skills checklists, self-studies, education videos, education supplies, and orientation manual).
• Designs educational activities to include documentation of a needs assessment, description of target audience, educational objectives, content outline, teaching methods (self-study, presentation, real-time), and evaluation strategies.
• Works with Nurse Educator to identify appropriate resources (i.e. room arrangements, AV equipment, handouts, other teaching aids).
• Conducts individualized age-specific patient/family assessments according to defined unit scope and nursing practice standards, appropriate collaborative problem and protocols.
• Develops individualized patient/family plan of care using practice guidelines/protocols to meet identified needs.
• Implements and evaluates nursing actions in accordance with the individualized patient/family plan of care and patient condition/needs.
• Ensures documentation reflects assessment/evaluation, modification and patient’s response to therapy, changes in condition and therapeutic interventions/procedures.
• Utilizes daily/weekly rounding as a tool in identifying educational clinical needs of staff/unit and teaches staff to promote consistent delivery of patient care standards.
• Accepts assignment in the clinical area for direct patient care as needed.
• Professionally supports the assigned clinical area as seen through interactions with patients, families, staff, colleagues, others.
• Professionally seeks opportunities to help teammates during shift as needed.
• Serves as preceptor for new clinical staff as necessary.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's in nursing required.
• Minimum of 5 years clinical area experience required.
• Current valid RN licensure in the state of Nebraska required.
• Current American Heart Association Basic Life Support (BLS) required.
• Pediatric Life Support (PALS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) required for the hospital setting.

Skills

• Maintain strict confidentiality in dealing with sensitive information.
• Communicate and maintain a satisfactory and harmonious working relationship with all levels of staff, public, other consumers in a courteous and tactful manner.
• Apply strong organizational skills.
• Apply knowledge of general Departmental, FFBH and BTNRH policies and administrative procedures.
• Handle stress of multi-tasking in high volume situations.
• Prioritize requests related to timeliness and need related to patient care.
• Provides patient care and education according to the patient population served.

Preferred Qualifications

• Masters in nursing preferred.
• Minimum 2 years education experience preferred.
• For hospital setting - Certification in specialty area preferred or within one year of eligibility preferred.