what does a nurse educator for an unit do???

Also wondering myself...

I see my nurse educator around often, but I'm always wondering what do they do??

Mine is managing my orientation, doing direct teaching, providing me with resources, organizing inservices on new equipment and procedures. She also helps out with patient care.

I know that they're instrumental in running new grad programs/residencies - teaching classes for the new grads, etc...

:)orientation

inservices

administrative and staff meetings

I helped to disperse info for new policies changes or equipment. I attended monthly meetings with the hospital educator and other unit educators.

On my unit, I held monthly meetings so the info could trickle down. I encouraged the staff to bring unit problems or issues to the table with possible solutions. Unit educators cannot change corporate policy (raises, etc...) but there were things that we improved on our specific unit.

I am a firm believer that when you teach, you learn. I put up a list of different cardiac rhythms and had each nurse pick one and do a short poster education which included characteristics of, potential side effects of, nursing care of that rhythm.

We have 2, one is for the staff education, like Ed days, getting new info up and running, things like that. The other is for patient Ed...she makes sure we have discharge teaching items that are appropriate, updates things on our patient references, things like that. They work with the CNS.

We have three and they coordinate the internships and come up with numerous required inservices to make everyone do.