Professional Development Educator - Full time (RN Required)

About the role

As one of the nation's Top 15 Health Systems, recognized by Premier and Modern Healthcare, Valley Health is a place where excellence, compassion, and purpose come together. This distinction reflects our commitment to exceptional patient care, clinical quality, and the caregivers who make it all possible. The Professional Development Educator is accountable for implementing standardized education, onboarding, competency, and workforce development programs that promote practice readiness, safe clinical care, and consistent outcomes across assigned departments, service lines, and care settings. This role supports the development and maintenance of professional competence, fosters lifelong learning, and facilitates professional growth for clinical and interprofessional caregivers throughout their professional journey. The Professional Development Educator operationalizes system-wide education, competency, and workforce development strategies, ensuring consistent implementation, effective adoption, and efficient use of organizational resources across assigned departments, service lines, and care settings. This role partners with leaders, subject matter experts, and interprofessional teams to deliver learning experiences, support transition to practice, facilitate competency development, and provide coaching, mentorship, and professional development throughout the caregiver career journey. Through effective education delivery and competency validation, the Professional Development Educator contributes to improved time-to-productivity, workforce readiness, staff engagement, and retention, while reducing variability in onboarding processes and supporting efficient utilization of staffing resources.

Responsibilities

• Implements and delivers onboarding, orientation, competency, just-in-time learning, and continuing professional development programs to support workforce readiness, professional growth, and safe clinical practice.
• Facilitates instructor-led learning experiences using evidence-based educational strategies and adult learning principles.
• Adapts educational delivery strategies to meet the unique needs of assigned departments, service lines, and caregiver populations while maintaining system standards.
• Identifies learning needs and implements targeted interventions that support workforce readiness, staff engagement, retention, and patient safety.
• Facilitates and monitors initial and ongoing competency assessment, validation, documentation, and development to ensure caregivers demonstrate safe, effective, and professional practice.
• Implements standardized competency frameworks and validation processes to promote consistency, regulatory compliance, and reduced variability in practice.
• Provides coaching, feedback, and practice support to strengthen clinical judgment, decision-making, and performance at the point of care.
• Collaborates with leaders, preceptors, subject matter experts, and Professional Development Specialists to support onboarding, transition to practice, competency progression, and workforce readiness.
• Identifies competency gaps and facilitates targeted development activities to address individual, team, or practice-area needs.
• Supports operational leaders through coordination of educational activities, competency processes, and workforce development initiatives.
• Effectively utilizes approved technologies, learning systems, data tools, and standardized workflows to optimize educational delivery, improve data integrity, and reduce administrative burden.
• Identifies opportunities to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and optimize educational resources within assigned practice areas.