RN Palliative Care Coordinator - 40 hour FT Days

PEOPLE ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Functions as a palliative care expert consultant to interprofessional team members for complex pain and symptom management issues through provision of advanced assessment skills for complex palliative care. Serves as a leader (including education, mentoring, and resource) for patient, families and interprofessional health care team.

• Collaborates to foster healthy relationships in the work environment such as mitigation of conflict. Anticipates the needs of the staff members and proactively offers assistance. Promotes positive behaviors, and peer-to-peer accountability. Acts as a role model and coaches staff in effective verbal, non-verbal and written communication, which includes active listening and teaching.

• Contributes to improving nurse satisfaction/engagement by serving as a role model and mentor, facilitating teamwork with RNs, non-licensed and interprofessional staff, as evidenced by the annual overall RN-RN teamwork score and interprofessional relationship score.

SERVICE ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Receives referrals and conducts appropriate assessments. Monitors and evaluates plan of care development and appropriate delivery of palliative care/symptom management, referral to appropriate resources, coordination of access to equipment, medications, dietary, rehabilitation services, and other health care facilities/entities when needed. Facilitates team and family conferences.

• Provides leadership, direction, development, and evaluation of the supportive care/palliative care program. Practices in a manner that is congruent with cultural diversity and inclusion principles. Serves as a patient advocate in preventing/resolving ethical issues.

• Develops and implements effective patient teaching strategies based on learning needs; uses appropriate resources, incorporating planning for care after discharge. Consistently evaluates the patient's comprehension and adapts teaching methods accordingly.

• Strives to exceed patients and coworkers' expectations. Drives department activities to improve department score for patient satisfaction on unit-based scorecard, through peer-to-peer accountability.

QUALITY/SAFETY ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Models the standards of care related to the nursing process, as outlined in the Houston Methodist Professional Nursing Practice document. Collaborates with interprofessional health care team to achieve patient goals. Anticipates/prevents and recognize/resolves early declines in patient condition and emergent situations.

• Models the standards related to regulatory requirements and professional practice as outlined in the Houston Methodist Professional Nursing Practice document. Role models highly developed assessment, clinical documentation, leadership and analytical skills; integrates and contributes to professional practice standards, policies, procedures, protocols and leads improvements in patient safety-related processes at unit or service line level. Serves as a patient advocate by identifying and reporting unsafe or malfunctioning equipment and unsafe operational practices to department leadership. Contributes to development of service line and hospital standards and guidelines.

• Audits adherence to program and hospital initiatives; fostering quality & safety improvements as necessary. Tracks data for all consulted patients and logs information within the EMR and other databases as indicated. Reports data as required.

FINANCE ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Models independent time management effectively and prioritization of daily tasks. Actively participates in the stewardship and efficient utilization of resources and needs including department capital and operational budgets.

• Facilitates transition of patients between care settings (ex. Home care, long term care, hospice) when appropriate. Implements department strategies to achieve financial target on unit-based scorecard and mentors others to do the same through timely documentation of care, decreasing length of stay, optimizing efficiency, and other areas according to department specifications.

• Provides statistical/budgetary data to appropriate persons; reports on required data at identified meetings.

GROWTH/INNOVATION ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Serves as a resource on palliative care for the community. Provides education to the public, students, and health care professionals related to supportive medicine/palliative care reviewing patient charts, contacting family members when appropriate. Identifies and helps develop patient, professional and public educational materials and presentations. Provides seminars and presentations as appropriate. Serves as primary contact and liaison for specified clinical departments/physician offices and community entities regarding Palliative Care. Attends tumor boards and other meetings as indicated. Attends related conferences to embrace best evidence and increase own knowledge in the related field.

• Leads and identifies opportunities for practice changes, innovative solutions to improve patient care and performance improvement. Investigates and incorporates evidence-based practices which are presented to shared governance and leadership. Supports change initiatives and adapts to unexpected changes. Expands individual nursing knowledge and coaches staff to grow in knowledge, abilities, skills, and attitudes. Completes and updates the individual development plan (IDP) on an on-going basis.

This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive; the employee will also perform other reasonably related business/job duties as assigned. Houston Methodist reserves the right to revise job duties and responsibilities as the need arises.

EDUCATION

• Bachelor of Science degree or higher from an accredited School of Nursing

WORK EXPERIENCE

• Three years experience with direct clinical nursing patient care

• Clinical nursing care in adult supportive medicine/palliative care and/or hospice care preferred