Quality Patient Safety Advisor- Perioperative Instrument Quality

Discover Vanderbilt University Medical Center:  Located in Nashville, Tennessee, and operating at a global crossroads of teaching, discovery, and patient care, VUMC is a community of individuals who come to work each day with the simple aim of changing the world. It is a place where your expertise will be valued, your knowledge expanded, and your abilities challenged. Vanderbilt Health is committed to an environment where everyone has the chance to thrive and where your uniqueness is sought and celebrated. It is a place where employees know they are part of something that is bigger than themselves, take exceptional pride in their work and never settle for what was good enough yesterday. Vanderbilt’s mission is to advance health and wellness through preeminent programs in patient care, education, and research.

Organization:

Quality, Safety & Risk Prev

Job Summary:

Serves as a quality improvement advisor to provide project management facilitation, education, and data analysis for improvement of systems and processes, under occasional guidance. Facilitates the development, implementation and evaluation of organizational strategies to improve clinical quality and care, patient safety, and financial outcomes.

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Quality Patient Safety Advisor- Perioperative Instrument Quality

This position is unique and will serve as both an educator & quality patient safety advisor, with knowledge in the VUH perioperative and sterile processing space preferability with a quality background.

Specifics to the job role responsibilities:

• Provides onsite support for the instrument quality program to focus on quality improvement initiatives for VUH operating rooms, sterile processing and surgery centers. Providing instruction and consultation to teams within department to advance education and improve internal processes.

• Utilizing the perioperative POD structure the QSPAs will assist with analyzing OR & SPD data (such as reported defects, veritas reports, etc.).

• Focus on process improvement, instrument availability, tray defects, service line specific improvement plan development, report out at POD meetings SPD/OR improvement initiatives, and be onsite to assess improvement plans.

• Assists perioperative & sterile processing department managers or other quality improvement teams in identifying, developing and monitoring outcomes. Development of performance metrics to assess effectiveness of improvement pans.

• Coordinates and facilitates patient safety event analysis of varying impact levels. Develops and plans for process redesign. Organizes, develops, and leads projects.

• Summarizes findings to promote the prioritization of improvement initiatives. Coordinates communication of quality management initiatives to appropriate forums such as POD meetings, committees, etc.

• Focuses on continuous performance improvement for the operating room & sterile processing spaces to support institutional quality goals.

• Collaborates with departments, interdisciplinary teams, and external entities, when necessary, to develop and implement strategies to improve care and processes.

• Navigates the organization to address and work through barriers and escalating when appropriate.

Preferred skills, education, certifications in addition to VUMC’s minimum requirements:

• Preferred, but not required as we can perform on the job training: experience with perioperative (OR) experience, sterile processing experience and familiar with quality improvement strategies.

• Certification, degrees, experience:

  • (AST) Surgical technologist,

  • (CRCST/CBSPD) Sterile processing,

  • Quality certification (CPHQ, or comparable)

  • or 5- years relevant experience working in an operating room setting, sterile processing department and/or quality improvement.

This position would require some travel (to perform onsite assessments, support, training, etc. in our VUH perioperative (Operating Rooms), sterile processing departments & surgery center sites, and does have the opportunity to work from home on occasion.

• Roughly 35% Travel, 50% In-Office, & 15% Work from home opportunity.

We would like for the above skill set, but they are not deal breakers as to finding someone who fits all the criteria listed above will be a challenging, we can always provide on the job training.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
• Collaborates with departments, interdisciplinary teams, and external entities when necessary, to develop and implement strategies to improve care and processes. Navigates the organization to address and work through barrier