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Discussion

NICU staff educators

I am interested in taking a staff education position but am reluctant to do so because I will not be allowed to work per-diem in the unit anymore. Staff Ed is considered a leadership position so you are precluded from working as staff. I do not want to lose skills and feel educators need to work shoulder to shoulder with those they are teaching. i am curious what is the practice in other hospitals.

Thank you

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Our staff educators are always around the unit, and some of them do advanced skills (PICC placement), but they are not working per diem. I wish sometimes they would just to keep up with practice. Things change!!!

  • Expert

Whenever you move forward, you leave some things behind.

Is the educator role something that you really want? What are your long-term career goals? If your career goals involve moving away from bedside staff nursing positions, then you have to be willing to take those first steps.

Over the course of my 30+ years in nursing (much of it in NICU education and CNS roles), I found that I was able to pick up the clinical skills quickly after being away from the bedside for a while. It would take a little re-orientation, but not all that much. As I got older and was away from the bedside for longer periods of time, it became more difficult -- but by then, my career path had taken me in directions in which going back to staff nursing was less important to me. In the early years of my career (when that was important to me), I didn't find it hard to do.

If your job is in a NICU and you are a helpful person, you will find opportunities to help out -- and stay "close enough" to the action to remain sufficiently familiar with the clinical workings -- which you will need to do to be a good educator.

Staff Ed is considered a leadership position so you are precluded from working as staff. I do not want to lose skills and feel educators need to work shoulder to shoulder with those they are teaching.

Thank you

Can you explain the rationale for segregating "leadership" from staff. It has been my experience that units where leadership personnel helped out occasionally doing patient care had better communication, morale and mutual respect between management and staff.

Our last educator was occasionally seen on the unit, usually doing an IV or art line for someone. Our new educator is an NNP and wants to shadow a nurse so she sees our day to day lives, and how we chart etc..

Can you explain the rationale for segregating "leadership" from staff. It has been my experience that units where leadership personnel helped out occasionally doing patient care had better communication, morale and mutual respect between management and staff.

It might be a union issue. I know that the NLRB likes to play silly buggers with who is and isn't a union repped employee, so sometimes weird lines get drawn. I know that only once in over two years on my unit has anyone in "leadership" put on a pair of scrubs and pitched in in a crisis.

It might be a union issue. I know that the NLRB likes to play silly buggers with who is and isn't a union repped employee, so sometimes weird lines get drawn. I know that only once in over two years on my unit has anyone in "leadership" put on a pair of scrubs and pitched in in a crisis.

Wow! How sad Definitely not a setting in which I would want to work!

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