Staff Development Coordinator

Don't confuse your getting an interview or even getting hired with actually being qualified for the job. They aren't indicators for that and you're not qualified.

Thanks! I will give that a read! Thanks for your help

As an RN, I had a staff development coordinator (outpatient practice) who had no experience in healthcare whatsoever. She was actually a family member of the lead physician, which is surely how she got the job. She was not very well-liked by the nurses. Part of that was because she was very unreliable (schedules would always come out late, her hours were all over the place, etc.). However, her lack of experience, and strong sense of entitlement that she exuded, also contributed. I don't say this to persuade you not to take the job (if you get it) and I realize this situation is not the exactly same as yours. However, just be aware that you will need to be very humble to those nurses with more experience than you. You will also need to grow some very thick skin.

I'm a new NP who also happens to be very young looking (not in the desirable way... more like I have a baby face and never really went through puberty). I've seriously been asked by people who don't know me where I go to college, or even where I'm thinking about going to college... yikes. Anyway, I'm used to having my knowledge and authority questioned. I just respond very humbly and politely, and eventually I gain their respect over time. I am just waiting for the day when I'll finally look old enough that patients will stop asking me, "are you even old enough to be a nurse?"... the looks on their faces when I tell them that "yes I am old enough to be a nurse. I am actually a nurse practitioner and I will be doing your physical today."

I give you these two examples to illustrate that delegating to people with more experience than you (or even to people who are just older than you) is not easy. If you take this job, you will have to work extra hard to earn the respect of your staff. And even if you are very kind to them and do an excellent job, they still might not like you. Will you be able to withstand this?

Finally, if I were you, my biggest concern would be that this is a SNF. It is already a risk that you are taking this job with so little experience. It is even more of a gamble that it is in a SNF. Because they typically have very high turn-over rates, you may end up with a lot of work on your plate and very little support. I've known a lot of new RN and NP grads who've taken their first jobs in SNFs thinking, "hey if it's terrible I'll just stick it out for 1 year and then find something better"... only to leave 3 months later. They had very little training and no support. Sometimes you have to settle on a job you don't want to gain more experience, but you have to draw a line for yourself somewhere. For me, I would be very cautious about taking a management job with so little clinical experience in a SNF.

Wow - that escalated rapidly.

I'd advise OP to first, review the scope of the job & compare it to her qualifications & skill set. If it's primarily focused on administrative tasks rather than on activities that require clinical and educational knowledge, it's probably a good fit. Staff development is one of those "iceberg" jobs -- it looks relatively simple unless you know what is required to keep the top part afloat.

Staff development is actually crucial to the liability/risk of any health care organization. We're usually responsible for the mechanisms that validate and maintain clinical competence. So our work is fundamental to ensuring patient safety and the quality of care. - IMO, these records are ALWAYS in the first batch of subpoena/e-discovery requests by plaintiff's attorneys. Careless actions (not aligning training with current EBD, failure to follow FLSA standards for home-grown tests and assessments, etc.) can also trigger EEO & FLSA lawsuits against the employer & the educator. If OP has no experience in these areas, she'll need an experienced mentor to help her avoid all of the minefields.

There's nothing wrong with acting quickly to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. As professionals, we're continually engaging in self-development to address our own skill/knowledge gaps. Accepting a 'stretch' job can be very invigorating.

The best thing is to make sure you take a refresher CE course. You need to be able to run the department in compliance with State and Federal Regulations.

Thank you so very much for your feedback! This really really helped me a lot!

Thank you very much! I appreciate your objective feedback very much! I am going to look in to all of these things

Don't do it! They will use you and abuse you, and even if they don't, you need much more experience to do a job like that well. (And yes, some of the comments were very snarky...)