Clinical Nurse Educator / Infection Control RN (Sacramento)

POSITION TITLE: Clinical Nurse Educator/ Infection Control Registered Nurse

REPORTS TO: Director of Nursing

DESCRIPTION OF POSITION:

This position is responsible for planning, scheduling, monitoring, and documenting staff development activities of all employees. This includes orientation, in-service training, annual competency requirements, and professional development activities. The RN Educator also serves as the hospital’s Infection Control Nurse and will be responsible for coordinating the activities Infection Prevention/Control Program by assuming direct responsibility for infection control related surveillance and monitoring activities, auditing, infection control reporting, staff training, and provision of infection control technical support and education for each facility staff.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES – Nurse Educator:

• Development: Develops and implements a personal plan for professional development. Schedules training sessions as needed for orientation of new employees, NCI certification, and other required staff training. Monitors staff completion of mandatory annual competencies, including CPR, NCI, safety review, and code of conduct. Collaborates with administration to assess staff development needs, plan and design training programs to meet identified needs, and evaluate the impact of programs offered. Fosters an environment that maximizes the value of human resources. Encourages people to realize their potential and provides opportunities to apply knowledge and skills.
• Accountability: Creates and maintains an education file for each employee for monitoring and documenting training and development of each staff member. Facilitates communication between employees and administration to ensure that orientation and training requirements are met in a timely manner. Acts to minimize risk and ensure safety of patients and staff in the psychiatric setting. Promotes strict staff observance of confidentiality and patient rights. Understands and supports hospital nursing philosophy and the hospital mission.
• Leadership: Guides, directs, motivates, and influences others. Provides positive reinforcement and feedback for improvement. Models a positive attitude towards organization. Focuses the team on teamwork to achieve goals. Understands and is sensitive to the needs of others. Sets high performance expectations and develops others by appropriate delegation.
• Decision Making: Chooses courses of action using sound and logical judgment. Optimizes information from multiple sources. Considers multiple goals, perspectives, options, and outcomes when making a decision. Uses intuition and insight in decision making when appropriate.
• Creativity: Creativity is the employment of originality, imagination, and inventiveness to generate new ideas, alternatives, or solutions. Develops new or improved methods, products, or services. Displays intellectual curiosity, and challenges conventional practices for the good of the organization.
• Currency: Stays current with the new techniques in the field

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES – Infection Prevention:

• Develop and maintain a method of identifying and recording known or suspected infections in patients and employees. Provide Hospital Acquired Infection (HAI) letters as clinically necessary.
• Carry out periodic inspections (minimum weekly) to ensure that procedures for the control of infections are being followed correctly.
• Collect and maintain statistical data in regards to the identification and control of infections.
• Coordinate closely with all departments to obtain information regarding patients and staff with suspected infections and ensuring control procedures are in place and adhered to. Human Resources will have oversight of employee health related issues.
• Monitor employee and patient illnesses and health activities, respond to problem situations in an urgent manner, and report the number and type to the Infection Control Committee.
• Initiate discussion regarding possible epidemiological causes of illnesses, specifically the determination of nosocomial versus community acquired infections.
• Contribute significantly to any interventions or recommendations made by the committee in response to the discussion about an illness.
• Coordinate with the Infection Control Committee to determine the direction of surveillance activities.
• Conduct periodic inspections to ensure that proced