Nurse Manager 1, Critical Response Teams

Department Overview

The Nurse Manager for Rapid Response, Care Escalation Pathway, and Code Blue Services plays a critical operational and clinical leadership role in ensuring timely and effective care for patients experiencing acute deterioration. This leader starts each day by reviewing activity from the prior shift, including Rapid Response Team (RRT) calls, Code Blue activations, Nurse Consults, and transfers from ICU to acute care. They evaluate documentation compliance, assess outcomes, and initiate follow-up or escalation where needed.

Function/Duties of Position

Throughout the day, the Nurse Manager serves as the primary liaison between the RRT nurses, ICU leadership, hospital medicine teams, and administrative stakeholders. This involves real-time troubleshooting of emergent issues, facilitating coordination for active RRT calls, and supporting clinical staff through coaching or immediate intervention. The Nurse Manager often participates in post-event debriefs, ensuring that care processes are reviewed, and lessons are translated into practice improvement. The are required to utilize the daily “huddle system” to escalate system barriers when encountered. On any given day, this leader may round on units to evaluate readiness, shadow RRT clinicians for quality assurance, and review the implementation of the adult and pediatric rapid response protocols. They ensure that workflows align with the overarching OHSU policy on RRT activation and location-based response procedures.The Nurse Manager chairs or participates in interdisciplinary huddles, RRT oversight committee meetings, and Code Blue steering groups. These meetings drive system-wide performance metrics, identify trends in adverse events or care delays, and support policy revisions or education plans. They may also coordinate high-fidelity simulations, mock codes, or Just Culture-based discussions related to recent cases.As a leader of both people and processes, the Nurse Manager manages staffing and schedules for the Rapid Response RN pool, ensures staff skills and annual competencies, and leads recruitment and onboarding. They support the emotional wellbeing of the responders, recognizing the high-intensity nature of this work, and may facilitate access to peer support or debriefings after difficult cases.This role is data-informed and improvement-driven. The Nurse Manager Actively:

• Monitors compliance with clinical practice standards and documentation requirements in the EHR.
• Conducts data analysis of RRT and Code Blue activations, including timeliness of response, interventions performed, and patient outcomes (ICU transfers, mortality, resuscitation success rates).
• Partners with Quality Management, Nursing Practice Specialists, Informatics, and Analytics to validate data accuracy and develop outcome dashboards.
• Identifies gaps in escalation processes, communication, or resuscitation effectiveness, and leads targeted quality improvement initiatives.
• Tracks and reports outcomes associated with resuscitation and rapid response events to executive leadership and regulatory bodies, ensuring alignment with national benchmarks.
• Incorporates findings from QI reviews into policy updates, education, and simulation design.

In all tasks, the Nurse Manager embodies a culture of safety and urgency, ensuring that the hospital’s rapid response infrastructure is reliable, resilient, and aligned with patient care needs. They are a visible, hands-on leader—responsive to bedside staff, engaged with executive stakeholders, and grounded in both policy and frontline realities.

The Nurse Manager provides operational and clinical leadership for Rapid Response, Care Escalation, and Code Blue Services, ensuring timely, coordinated care for patients experiencing acute deterioration.

Core Responsibilities:

• Daily Oversight: Reviews prior-shift activity (RRT calls, Code Blue activations, ICU transfers, and nurse consults), evaluates documentation and outcomes, and escalates issues as needed.
• Clinical Leadership: Serves as the primary liaison between RRT nurses, ICU leadership, hospital medicine, and administrators; provides real-time support, coaching, and debriefing for staff.
• System Readiness: Rounds on units, shadows RRT clinicians, and monitors adherence to adult and pediatric rapid response protocols and hospital policy.
• Data & Quality Improvement:
• Analyzes RRT and Code Blue data for timeliness, interventions, and patient outcomes (ICU transfer, survival, resuscitation success).
• Develops and monitors dashboards in collaboration with Quality, Informatics, and Analytics.
• Leads targeted QI initiatives to address trends, gaps, or delays in care.
• Reports outcomes to leadership and re