Registered Nurse (PACU)

Job Description

Job Description

PQC is accepting applications for experienced, civilian Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) Registered Nurses (RN) to work onsite at the Walter Reed National Medical Center (Bethesda, Maryland).

Duty Hours Night Shift
4 ten hour shifts per week

Responsibilities:

• Shall be able to read, write, speak and understand English well enough to effectively communicate with all patients and other health care providers.
• Shall be knowledgeable of equipment and supply terminology and skill sufficient to identify and use necessary equipment and supplies properly and to communicate proper use with nurses, medical staff, patients, and family members.
• Shall be sufficiently skilled to teach patients proper self-care and to motivate patients and family members to continue the procedures for promoting rapid healing.
• Shall be knowledgeable and possess skills necessary to provide care appropriate to any age-related needs of the patients. The contract RN shall demonstrate knowledge of the principles of growth and development appropriate to the appropriate patient population served: infants, children, adolescents, adults, and geriatric (>65).
• Possessing knowledge of a wide range of medical disorders/conditions, diagnostic studies and treatments related to prevention, and detection of illnesses in adults, is desirable.
• Be knowledgeable in professional care theories, principles, practices, and procedures to perform nursing assignments of moderate difficulty and experience in assessing adult and geriatric patients, as appropriate.
• Possess knowledge of computer operations and proficiency in the use of basic word processing, data entry and automated medical records.
• Assists the Trauma Program Manager (TPM) and Trauma Medical Director (TMD) in developing and maintaining a comprehensive Trauma and Acute Care Surgery (TACS) Program.
• Ensures timely and accurate concurrent and retrospective reviews of trauma patients’ (civilian and military) medical records for inclusion criteria, data element abstraction, and identification of complications and/or performance improvement filters for further review by the Trauma Acute Care Surgery team, peer review, and performance improvement processes.
• Adheres to required definitions and/or guidelines for data entry into database computer applications with 95% compliance on quarterly audits to ensure inter-rater reliability
• Serves as liaison to the multidisciplinary team and works collaboratively in support of the TACS Program.
• Provides data analysis and trends related to continuum of care of trauma and acute care surgery patients through continuous review of medical records, focused audits, and case reviews.
• Assists in facilitating meetings such as Joint Trauma System weekly case reviews, generating meeting minutes, pulling reports, or follow up on designated action items.
• Assist the Trauma Program Manager (TPM) with Program Component Coordination such as, ensuring multimedia sources are available across the continuum of care such as the Video Teleconferences (Weekly, Global and VA) and the multidisciplinary meetings.
• Participates in Multidisciplinary Trauma Rounds as designated by TPM and TMD.
• Provides weekly Trauma Round notes in patient’s electronic health record from multidisciplinary discharge planning meetings as prescribed by departmental/ hospital policy.
• Attend departmental and/or hospital committee meetings as designated by TPM or TMD.
• Provides education and training for departmental or hospital personnel as directed by TPM or TMD.
• Serves as an alternate for the Trauma Performance Improvement Coordinator as directed by TPM for such activities as pulling standardized/ad hoc reports, creating power point presentations, and documenting meeting minutes.
• Reports variances in patient care to TMD and coordinates follow up activities as needed to correct variances.
• Assists the TPM with Department of Defense Trauma Registry (DoDTR), trauma education research and injury prevention.
• Assists the TPM research development, implementation, and evaluate trauma care.
• Rounds with the TACS team on patients assigned to the TACS service and assists with coordination of inpatient services.
• Provides insight to TPM as it relates to the process of care through continuous audits, periodic focus audits, case reviews, and trend analysis in all phases of trauma care.
• Provides outstanding customer service to all multidisciplinary team members, and patients.
• In collaboration with the Trauma Program Manager (TPM) and Trauma Medical Director (TPD), responsible for the development and maintenance of a comprehensive Trauma Performance Improvement and Patient Safety Program.
• Conducts concurrent and retrospective patient audits and case reviews on select core measures and data elements to assess the quality of care/patient outcomes, compliance with clinical practice guidelines for Trauma and Acute Care Surgery patients, identify complications and/or performance improvement filters for further review, implements corrective action strategies, and evaluates effectiveness of the change.
• Conducts periodic gap analysis for compliance with American College of Surgeons Trauma Verification requirements related to the Trauma Performance Improvement Patient Safety (PIPS) program and develops project management plan for correcting identified gaps.
• Utilizes performance improvement methodologies such as Plan, Do, Check, Act, Fishbone diagrams, process flow charts and Lean Six Sigma as well as patient safety methodologies of Failure Mode Effect Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, and Human Factor Engineering when developing corrective action plans.
• Supports the physician, nursing, and ancillary services peer review process related to quality of care and identification of departmental, inter-departmental, and/or multidisciplinary operational issues which may negatively impacting care of trauma and acute care surgery patients:
  • Facilitate meetings by setting agenda and speakers and generating meeting minutes.
  • Provide training in performance improvement and patient safety methodologies.
  • Provide data collection, database searches, literature searches, etc.
  • Writes/reviews policies and procedures and clinical practice guidelines as needed utilizing professional knowledge and published evidence-based protocols.
  • Identify and recommend process and documentation improvements.
  • Provide strategic (non-medical) directions to team leaders.