POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES

Under the supervision of the MCHC Director of Nursing and the Department Nurse Team Leader, the MCHC Registered Nurse will work as an integral member of an interdisciplinary health care team, and assume direct responsibility for both patient care and standard of nursing care delivered in the clinical setting.

General Duties:

• Works in harmony with other healthcare professionals, clinic staff and patients by exhibiting a positive attitude and a commitment to MCHC’s mission, vision, and values.
• Understand organizational goals and perform job duties in a manner consistent with those goals.
• Demonstrates knowledge of the scope of practice for all nursing disciplines as described in the Nursing Practice Act.
• Proactively assumes responsibility for both the standard of nursing care and customer service delivered in the clinical setting.
• Effectively plans, organizes, directs, and evaluates all nursing activities being conducted in the clinical setting; appropriately delegates tasks to team members to promote both service efficiency and maximum resource utilization; monitors task completion.
• Plans and organizes the nursing schedule as necessary to maintain proper nurse/provider ratios; prioritizes work assignments and available resources to maintain efficient patient flow.
• Demonstrates acceptable professional conduct, interpersonal communication skills with patients, peers, and other healthcare professionals.
• Meets deadlines to maintain current license and required annual training.
• Actively pursues continuing education to improve professional skills and job performance; identifies own areas of needed improvement, formulates self-improvement goals and work toward meeting those goals.
• Utilizes appropriate methods to deal with stressful situations.
• Maintains patient and staff confidentiality.
• Demonstrates reliability and dependability in meeting work schedules, the fulfillment of responsibilities and commitments in daily attendance, punctuality, productivity and efficiency.
• Maintains awareness of new information applicable to the position’s duties and responsibility (e.g. policies, meeting minutes, procedures, memoranda, protocols, etc.>)
• Demonstrates a strong interest in working with both an interdisciplinary health care team and a diverse patient population.

Specific Duties

• Follows and establishes clinical protocols and performs accurate and thorough examinations and work-ups of all patients.
• Accurately and thoroughly assesses current patient status, including the patient’s preventive health status, and communicates needs to the attending medical provider.
• Provides comprehensive patient education based on an assessment of patient needs and established clinical standards of nursing care; thoroughly documents all patient education activities in the medical record.
• Provides skilled professional nursing care as demonstrated by safely and properly performing required technical skills (sterile dressings, pulmonary treatments, etc.) and the safe and accurate administration of medications, IV fluids, and immunizations.
• Thoroughly and accurately documents all provider orders, nursing actions and the safe and interventions taken in the medical record following established guidelines, and with the use of approved abbreviations.
• Performs patient triage, both on-site and by telephone, to enhance the appropriateness and timeliness of care pursuant to established nursing protocols and standing orders.
• Anticipates the needs of medical providers related to patient visits, and assists providers in the delivery of patient care.
• Demonstrates the ability to perform effectively and appropriately in emergency situations.
• Promptly informs the Department Nurse Team Leader/Director of Nursing of real and/or potential clinical problems.
• Demonstrates knowledge of, and follows at all times, established Infection Control guidelines, OSHA standards, JCAHO standard, and MCHC safety-related problems.
• Participates in all staff educational and in-service training programs.
• Assumes an active role as a patient advocate to ensure that individual health needs are being met, including responding to the patient telephone messages and request for information in a timely and professional manner.
• Keeps patients and family members informed of situations that may affect the clinical visit (e.g. provider medical emergency, longer than usual waiting times, seeing a provider other than the one scheduled, etc.,)
• Performs approved laboratory testing, including the proper handling and labeling of all test specimens, as directed by MCHC policies and procedures and established CLIA/JCAHO guidelines.
• Demonstrates the ability to identify clinic needs, including the development and implementation of new protocols, policies and procedural changes that promote improved performance.
• Participates in departmental and organization-wide Performance Improvement activities.
• Assists in the orientation of new nursing staff.
• Displays both the competency and willingness to be assigned to other clinical departments, as needed.
• Utilizes slow times to constructively enhance clinic operations and to assist other departments when time and workload permits.
• Performs other incidental duties as assigned.

Reasonable Accommodations Statement

To accomplish this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform, with or without reasonable accommodation, each essential function satisfactorily. Reasonable accommodations may be made to help enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

This position requires compliance with Health Center’s compliance standards, including its Standards of Conduct, Compliance Program, and policies and procedures. Such compliance will be an element considered as part of the regular performance evaluation.