RN educator role/ assistant-manager

[moodwaffle]

the 220 bed community hospital that I work for has "Nurse Educators" for each department (for the last 4 years or so). These educators, which I am new to, are not all BSN, none have Masters. Our roles are not well defined. Some of us have more autonomy than others, some pick up assistant-manager type responsibilities. Basically, I'm pretty sure I'm responsible for:

1. Orientation paperwork and process.

2. Yearly competencies.

3. Keeping education files up to par.

My goal is get a clearly defined role, have it apply to all educators. For example, some educators do not plan the yearly RN skills fair we have. The assistant-managers do. We all have to work together on the skills fair, but the heirchary inserts itself and effectiveness and teamwork decreases--- Because MY role is not clearly defined and I'm guessing!

Anyways, I'm writing up a role proposal and going to present it to the head honcho of education. It'd be great to know how other hospitals use educators or people similar to this position.

[stephva1008]

We have 2 nurse educators for our entire hospital system and they basically run the nursing orientation classes. The UM is responsible for education inservices and skills day. Making sure folks are up to date on CPR, etc.

You're lucky! Sounds like a nice job! Keep us posted!

[JJGRN]

We also have unit based educators within our organization. The educators are responsible for coordinating orientation, unit based inservices, weekly tracers, chart reviews of certain quality improvement initiatives, just in time education, and they also get involved in service line and hospital wide education initiatives, such as hospital orientation, CPR/ACLS instructors, clinical skills fairs, etc.

I think its good that you want to have a clearly defined role for your position. It can be frustrating when you have people in the same job title having difference responsibilities. Good luck to you.:)

[moodwaffle]

Thanks for the replies.

How many hours a week do your educators work? JJGRN's description sounds pretty much was we do, but 10 hours a week.

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

In my experience, this is a pretty common model for supporting staff development in our area. The unit-based people may only be 'budgeted' for 4 hours a week, but in actuality their work generally consumes more time, depending on how much support & task work they are doing for the UM. I think it is critical to differentiate the competencies required for these roles as opposed to those needed by the centralized educators.

Educators who are in centralized (whole organization) roles should have a much higher skill set... nurses should be MSNs with competency in educational theory, instructional design, psychometrics, education law, etc. They should provide guidance and support for managers & de-centralized education staff. It is also crucial for the organization's education leader to understand how to operate education as a 'business unit' - complete with productivity measures - in a way that is comparable to other deparments. Otherwise, the department is continuously vulnerable to the whims of budget-makers. Been there, done that.