From various posts that I have been reading regarding management

This question is very specific to the type of facility and/or the organization. I can give you a quick hospital answer but even that is variable depending on the organization. In a hospital you usually have, in order:

Staff Nurse

---responsible for the patients under their care

Charge Nurse

---responsible for minute by minute department operations, ultimately responsible for all the

patients in the department

Associate Nurse Manager (can be called: Assistant Nurse Manager, Shift Manager, Shift Supervisor etc)

---Very site specific responsibilities, could be schedule, could be patient flow, could be

responsible for the "shift", reports to Manager

Nurse Manager (sometimes more than one depending on the size of the department)

---Has responsibility for whole department, budget, benchmarks, hospital initiatives, usually

signs off on all hiring/firing with the assistance of Associate (and usually input from

Charge Nurses). Reports to Director.

Director (can have multiple departments under them if smaller hospital)

---Larger initiative responsibilities, ultimate responsibility for all departments under them,

usually spends most of time in meetings, answers to "region" rather than site specific,

reports to Chief Nursing Officer

Chief Nursing Officer (CNO)

---Responsible for all nursing departments, reports to CEO, regional/national leadership,

direct reports are the Directors for each area of specialty

Chief Operating Officer (COO)

---Responsible for all non-nursing departments and usually building etc, also reports to CEO,

regional/national leadership

Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

---Obvious responsibilities, works with CNO, COO, Directors and sometimes Managers on

budgetary goals and department flex/fixed budget measures. Reports to CEO,

regional/national leadership.

Again this is just a generality of some hospital's org chart. If you were a new Manager coming into a new job one of the first things you would ask for is the Org Chart...you want to know who reports to who and how the hospital is structured because it is so different depending on your company.

Hope this helps a little...

Larry