Clinical Educator - Nursing and Personal Support

VHA Home HealthCare (VHA) is one of the largest not-for-profit home care providers in Ontario. Our team is made up of close to 3,000 caring and committed professionals who love what they do. Our providers tell us: “Home care is where I can truly make a difference. There is such a sense of accomplishment from helping people live independently at home.” Our teams work together to provide high quality, client-centred care to those who need it most in their homes, schools, retirement homes and other community settings. Many of our team members manage their own schedules in the community and they say, “The freedom and flexibility can’t be beat.” Providers form meaningful bonds with the clients and families they serve over time and are supported by a diverse regional team and beneficial home office programs. Team members tell us “I love the inclusive culture. I feel welcome and at home.” 

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Pay Range

Commensurate with Experience

 

Purpose of the position:
The role of the Clinical Educator (CE) – Nursing & PSW is to provide clinical practice leadership and guidance to assist nurses and personal support workers, to develop, enhance and maintain their competencies to advance practice excellence and client-centeredness in care and service delivery. They are instrumental towards developing homecare specialists and leveraging adult learning principles to engage learners in taking an active role in professional development. This position promotes foundational and advanced practice competencies of clinical staff through knowledge translation at the point-of-care, team-based learning, classroom, and virtual-hybrid teaching modalities.

Based in the Best Practice and Education (BP&E) team, the CE will work in collaboration with Professional Practice Leaders (PPLs) to plan, develop and facilitate delivery of education and orientation programs, and will contribute to the evaluation of those programs. They will work closely in partnership with the Integrated Client and Community Care (IC&CC) and Strategic Solutions and Partnerships (SS&P) program teams to facilitate and provide ongoing support to staff, to develop education programs to meet learning needs, and sustain clinical competencies. The CE will liaise and collaborate with clinical leaders from VHA partners, including occasional working on-site with system partners, to facilitate communication among teams and co-develop competency training for point-of-care nurses and PSWs.

The CE is responsible to review and contribute to performance evaluations of nurses and personal support workers as requested; including participation in the disciplinary process where there are practice issues or concerns to support in development of learning plan (evaluating clinical competencies; re-training; and recommending ongoing support/monitoring activities). The CE acts as a role model; provides peer-support – virtually, or at the point of care, sets evidenced based practice standards for performance; and provides innovative and flexible learning opportunities to promote a strong evidenced-based, continuous professional development.

The VHA Clinical Educator position follows a hybrid model subject to the terms of VHA’s Remote Office Work Policy. This will require the CE to regularly come into VHA Offices / sites at agreed upon intervals in addition to other key-meetings/trainings as required by their core responsibilities to be met – subject to change based on performance, operational and/or business needs. Main offices are located in the GTA and Whitby with rare occasions for business trips to conferences or training opportunities beyond those locations.

 

Key skills, experience and behaviours required for this position:

• Current Registration and licensure with the College of Nurses of Ontario required.
• Undergraduate Degree in Nursing is required with preference given to candidates with or currently enrolled in a Graduate Degree program in Nursing or Education.
• 3-5 years progressive experience in nursing, with at least 2 years experience in a home/community OR 2 years experience in an acute care setting. Experienced with facilitating nurses’ clinical education / development (formal or informally) would be considered a strong asset.
• Ongoing membership with professional association (i.e., RNAO).
• Good understanding of the health care services and delivery processes in the community and home care sector. 
• Ability to explain and apply the theoretical, empirical and experiential foundation of nursing/ clinical practice, and to develop and disseminate evidence-based knowledge. 
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