Senior Director of Nursing Services | Maternal, NICU, & Pediatrics

About the role

The Senior Director of Nursing Services is a transformational leader responsible for the strategic growth, operational excellence, and clinical innovation of the entire continuum of Maternal, NICU, and Pediatric Programs.

Functional Management

• Spearheads high-reliability initiatives across ambulatory clinics, maternal care, NICU, and pediatric service lines, ensuring clinical outcomes consistently exceed national safety and quality benchmarks.
• Mandates strategic programs for maternal morbidity reduction, neonatal outcome optimization, and infant safety.
• Drives specialized neonatal priorities, including the advancement of neurodevelopmental care practices, skin-to-skin programs, and human milk feeding rates.
• Oversees total compliance with clinical best practices, accreditation requirements, and hospital-based regulatory standards.
• Collaborates with Case Management to ensure safe care transitions, including robust NICU discharge support and neonatal follow-up program coordination.
• Orchestrates initiatives that measurably enhance the patient and family experience, utilizing family-integrated care models and parent empowerment programs to position the organization as a provider of choice.
• Maintains operational performance, takes action to address opportunities and/or deficiencies, leads and/or actively engages in performance improvement and quality initiatives.
• Leads process improvement initiatives to reduce length of stay (LOS), optimize throughput, and eliminate preventable harm.
• Benchmarks high-performing national programs to identify and adapt clinical innovations for the local patient population.
• Fosters an environment where frontline staff are empowered to challenge the status quo and share ideas for safety and workflow enhancement.
• Champions the use of real-time dashboards and KPIs to identify operational gaps and measure the ROI of improvement efforts.
• Cultivates a culture of curiosity by encouraging teams to pilot new ideas, learn from patient encounters, and scale successful clinical outcomes.
• Buys and maintains effective working relationships, advises and consults with executives, managers, and other personnel, and participates as an active member of various committees; leads work groups, projects and committees as assigned.

People Management

• Directs and coordinates the activities of assigned departments/functions.
• Directly leads and coaches a high-performing team of nurse leaders and managers, fostering a culture of professional growth and continuous learning.
• Communicates organizational goals and engages staff in developing departmental objectives and workplans.
• Communicates status updates transparently and consistently.
• Manages and leads employees from selection and hiring through offboarding/separation.
• Counsels, mentors, and supports managers and subordinate staff in the performance of their duties.
• Establishes clear expectations and fosters an environment that supports good communication through effective use of formal and informal discussion, 1:1’s, huddles, and staff meetings.
• Cultivates a high-engagement workplace culture, evidenced by measurable improvements in staff retention, safety, and leadership effectiveness metrics.
• Proactively monitors and manages employee satisfaction and engagement, turnover, training and development, and performance.
• Responds to union grievances.
• Takes appropriate action to identify and resolve concerns or issues.
• Mediates conflicts between staff and/or patients and staff.
• Develops and implements skills-training and scripting for dealing with difficult patients/customers and service recovery appropriate to the setting.
• Designs and implements a nursing leadership pipeline through active mentorship, intentional stretch assignments, and robust professional development.
• Plans and oversees department staffing and productivity.

Strategic Leadership

• Participates in strategic planning for the organization.
• Develops and leads implementation of departmental strategies and work plans.
• Serves as a subject matter expert and thought-partner.
• Promotes awareness of strategic initiatives, goals and objectives through regular communication and education.
• Empowers others to implement and execute plans.