Nursing Assistant I (Per Diem) - Acute Neurosurgery and ENT Care

About the role

Your passion belongs at UNC Health. Join more than 56,000 teammates working together to improve the health and well-being of the communities we serve across North Carolina. Looking for a highly engaged, team-oriented candidate to join our dynamic culture! Nursing Assistant I (per diem) needed for the Acute Neurosurgery and ENT Care Unit at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, NC. The Acute Neurosurgery and ENT Care Unit is a 27‑bed unit comprised of post‑operative surgical patients. Our neurosurgical patients have a variety of presentations including post‑operative brain and spinal surgeries, cancer, neuro‑ and spinal‑trauma, and stroke. Our ENT patients predominantly present with head and neck malignancies, including cancer and infection, and require a variety of surgical interventions involving the head, mouth, tongue, jaw, thyroid, and oropharynx. Working on this unit will provide countless opportunities to expand and strengthen foundational clinical and critical thinking skills including, but not limited to, airway management, tracheal suctioning, drains, feeding tubes, in‑depth neurological and stroke assessment, and much more. We take pride in our dynamic, supportive and engaged team by focusing on creating an organized environment of excellence, fun, and innovation. We respect and prioritize work‑life balance and celebrate our long‑standing culture of positivity, recognition, accountability, and teamwork. Our unit has received two consecutive Gold Beacon Awards for Excellence. The AACN created the Beacon designation to recognize individual units that have set a path to excellence in an effort to highlight units that distinguish themselves in every facet of patient care. Recipients of a Beacon designation demonstrate excellence in sustained unit performance and patient outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Assist physicians and other health care providers with routine examinations and procedures, as well as procurement of equipment and supplies during emergency situations.
• In the psychiatric setting, aid patients in reality orientation, participate in behavior modification plans/therapy, provide informal support therapy to patients/families, provide verbal de‑escalation of potentially aggressive patients, aid in the physical management of aggressive/out‑of‑control patients, facilitate age‑appropriate play for children, and monitor the therapeutic milieu activities on the assigned unit to ensure that emotional and safety needs of patients are met.
• Observe, collect, and document patient information obtained while providing care and promptly report significant changes in the patient's condition to a registered nurse or physician.
• Provide assistance to patients and their families during admission to the clinical area, orientation to the hospital/clinic/home health experience, and discharge.
• Provide care/treatments to patients as outlined in the plan of care including, but not limited to, measurement of vital signs, height and weight, specimen collection, skin preps/scrubs, catheter care, capillary blood glucose checks, simple wound care, range of motion exercises, postural drainage, and supportive patient and family interactions.
• Provide direct personal care to patients as outlined in the plan of care for routine activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, feeding, and assisting with ambulation.
• Provide indirect care to patients and assigned area including, but not limited to, cleaning the work area, changing linens, re‑stock