Job DescriptionElwyn seeks a
Director of Nursing to lead the Children's Services nursing team in providing normalized, empathic, coordinated, therapeutic, and preventative health care to children with severe and persistent behavioral health challenges and those with intellectual and developmental disabilities within a variety of settings. The Director of Nursing oversees the functions associated with care coordination and the delivery of nursing services while ensuring that both regulatory and clinical practice standards are met with the focus on appropriate medical and nursing management of both acute and chronic illness as well as working collaboratively with physicians, Elwyn staff, clinicians, therapists, other ancillary care providers, hospital care teams, pharmacies, and external vendors.
Duties & Responsibilities- Provides nursing oversight for the Children's Services education and residential treatment facilities and programs to ensure that nursing practice consistently meets regulatory requirements, Elwyn policies and procedures, and clinical best practice standards
- Ensures that ongoing clinical assessments, coordination, and interdisciplinary collaboration are performed following nursing scope of practice to meet client health care needs
- Ensures that appropriate health care assessments, including children's nursing clinical assessments and reports, are accurate and completed as directed by the treatment team by following policies and procedures, regulatory requirements, best practices, and nursing scope of practice
- Presents health care data collected through direct observation, interview, clinical assessment, and records review to the physician and larger treatment team to ensure a comprehensive plan of care
- Sets health care priorities in accordance with professional judgment
- Serves as a resource person to the staff and children served at Elwyn for questions related to health and wellness
- Reviews follow-up documentation of all recommendations for specialized services/consultations as necessary
- Reviews recommendations of consulting providers and liaisons with physicians and care providers for follow-up to ensure a comprehensive plan of care
- Advocates for all children served by all Children's Services programs by monitoring the quality of the medical and behavioral health supportive care provided by staff and community-based providers to ensure that care standards meet regulatory guidelines while encompassing a person-centered plan of care
- Coordinates activities and communication between external pharmacies, durable medical equipment (DME) providers, laboratory services, vendors, and insurers to ensure that children's specific needs are met in a clinically prudent and fiscally sound manner
- Maintains up-to-date inventory of nutritional supplements, medical equipment, personal protective equipment, and medical/dietary supplies to be used for resident and staff health, safety and wellness
- Executes infection control practices, isolation procedures, and point of care testing related to infectious disease, particularly COVID-19, to maintain health and safety standards
- Provides nursing leadership, direction, and support to the extended care team to ensure that consumer health and safety needs are adequately addressed
- Monitors the acute, chronic, and prophylactic healthcare needs of residents including regular review or having a designee review all physicians' orders related to medications, treatments, nutritional support, diagnostic testing, and ancillary therapies on at least a monthly basis to ensure a comprehensive plan of care
- Assists managers and directors with ensuring performance standards of any staffing agency-placed personnel resources and addressing any performance issues with agency liaisons
- Provides supervision of assigned staff in the areas including, but not limited to, recruitment, selection, leadership, coaching, training, performance management, and progressive disciplinary action, promotion, and termination
- Provides nursing and program staff in-service training and ongoing staff development on health-related topics, medical procedures, and infection control as needed to ensure that nursing staff are adhering to current and best practices in following clinical nursing care standards and are meeting children-specific health care needs and
organizational learning needs including regulatory training requirements - Directs the orientation and training of assigned nursing personnel to ensure effective onboarding
- Utilizes quality improvement strategies to address the following:
- Clinical performance of nursing staff through monthly audits of nursing documentation and care delivery
- Use of best practice guidelines in promoting health maintenance and disease prevention strategies
- Compliance with regulatory standards as they relate to specific program areas, such as licensing regulations and current policy
- Access to high quality care consistent with consumer specific needs
- Health care utilization data
- Assigns specific quality improvement activities/functions to nursing staff as necessary
- As part of the therapeutic team, monitors, develops, and maintains a safe and therapeutic living environment, including but not limited to monitoring for potential threats to health and safety and take appropriate actions to eliminate such threats
- Facilitates communication and collaboration with community-based social service agencies, healthcare providers, insurance providers, county and state offices of behavioral health, families, and other stakeholders in order to ensure quality care for the individuals served
- Reviews critical incidents related to the health and safety needs of the consumers and provides timely follow-up and communication to appropriate administrative staff
- Reviews medically complicated, high acuity cases in residential and educational programs with the interdisciplinary team in routine meetings, recommending changes and improvements in care delivery, as needed, and determining the appropriateness for admission to the behavioral health programs
- Provides on-call nursing support to staff in managing emergent healthcare issues
- Attends both professional and organizational meetings necessary to keep abreast of changes in nursing practice.
- Actively participates (or has a nursing designee participate) in Treatment Team and Morning Meeting (Rounds) to ensure the continuity of care of the residents
- Performs other duties as assigned
Policy and Procedure Development- Serves as a member of the Elwyn Nursing Policy and Procedure Committee to assist in prioritizing policy and procedure review and collaborates with other committee members to ensure compliance with nursing best practice standards and consistency across Elwyn services and locations; presents policies and procedures to the Nursing Policy and Procedure Committee for review and approval
- Works closely with the Nurse Educator to ensure that all behavioral health and education nursing staff are educated in nursing operations
- Identifies specific clinical and operational needs and works with the program nursing leadership team to develop policies, procedures, and training guidelines as needed; reviews and revises existing nursing policies and procedure for behavioral health and education on at least an annual basis, as assigned by the Service Line's Quality Improvement team; participates in the development of new policies as the needs arise
- Assures adherence to all established healthcare and safety policies, procedures, protocols, and regulations as they apply to the children's residential services and educational programs through regular review of practices
Training, Education, and Professional Development- Works closely with the Quality Improvement Director, to facilitate, schedule, and track the completion of orientation requirements and annual training/education requirements for behavioral health and education nursing services, ensuring that requirements are met; assists Quality Improvement Director in maintaining staff credentialing files that comply with regulatory requirements
- Assists program managers and directors with specific training initiatives as needed
- Participates in the ongoing development and evaluation of nursing staff through timely performance-based feedback and annual performance evaluations
- Monitors and maintains current nursing licensure to ensure compliance with Pennsylvania's State Board of Nursing Licensing requirements
- Attends and participates in ongoing educational opportunities designed specifically to better support the children served and obtains updated nursing and regulatory information to share with the program nursing and nursing leadership staff
- Applies best practices to the nursing practice at Elwyn
Other Duties- Represents Childrens Services on Elwyn committees (e.g. Pharmacy and Therapeutics), workgroups, and project teams as assigned
- Performs cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), crisis intervention, safe crisis management, and medication administration using agency-trained protocols
- Performs other duties as assigned
Qualifications, Education & Experience- Licensed as a Registered Nurse in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
- Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN); Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) preferred
- Five (5) years demonstrated experience with increasingly progressive management responsibilities in healthcare operations
- Ten (10) years of delivering direct clinical nursing services
- Behavioral health or school nursing experience preferred
- Demonstrated experience executing infection control practices, isolation procedures, and point of care testing related to infectious disease, particularly COVID-19
- Experience working with pediatric population with medical and behavioral health challenges,
- Experience working with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities preferred.
- Human service experience highly preferred
- Demonstrated ability to work effectively as part of a team
- Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and manage and prioritize multiple, often competing, priorities
- Demonstrated strong attention to detail
- Demonstrated excellent planning, analytic, strong time management, and organizational skills
- Demonstrated excellent judgment with the ability to independently solve problems and make decisions with little or no need for direct supervision
- Demonstrated ability to anticipate future needed changes or identify problem areas and take effective actions
- Must possess excellent customer interaction, negotiation, conflict resolution, collaboration, presentation, written and verbal communication, and interpersonal skills
- Demonstrated intermediate proficiency in the use of Microsoft Office Suite, including Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; experience in the use of OneDrive / SharePoint or similar cloud-based groupware, collaboration, and storage computing solutions preferred
- Experience with Electronic Health Record (EHR) / Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
- Current CPR certification with ability to perform CPR using agency-trained protocols; ability to perform safe crisis management and medication administration
- Demonstrated strong leadership skills, troubleshooting capability, and ongoing development of staff
- Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, meet deadlines, and work collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders at all levels
- Must possess a current, valid driver's license in state of residence, have a minimum of two (2) years of driving experience within the United States, and have an acceptable driving record.
