Registered Nurse Patient Safety Consultant

RN Quality Safety Consultant

Exciting Opportunity to Add Value to a Premier Acute Care Hospital

Excellent Hourly Salary $70.00 - $80.00

Full Time, 8 Hour Day Shift

The Patient Safety Consultant, RN is responsible for the management of the hospitals incident/event reporting system, including staff and manager education, and for conducting intensive investigation or root cause analysis related to the delivery of safe and efficient patient care. The Patient Safety Consultant, RN is responsible for facilitating management follow ups and assuring for comprehensiveness of corrective actions. This position works collaboratively with the Risk Management Department, Patient Safety and Accreditation Department, Quality Department, Medical Staff Office Department, and other affected department leaders and staff to investigate significant and sentinel events and to coordinate the root cause analysis process.

The Patient Safety Consultant, RN is a role that performs a range of functions that support the delivery of safe and effective patient care, the reduction of medical/health care errors and other factors that contribute to unintended adverse patient outcomes, improvement of the facility -wide patient safety program, and to ensure timely reporting of and follow -up/corrective action is taken in response to such events/incidents in accordance with the requirements of hospital policies, the Joint Commission, and other external regulatory and accrediting bodies. The Patient Safety Consultant, RN must possess the ability to perform extensive clinical investigations and root cause analysis of significant and sentinel events in order to assess potential liability and identify opportunities to improve patient safety.

This position coordinates data management for reporting unit level, department level and organizational level data. The Patient Safety Consultant, RN implements systems and processes for effective data collation and ensures comprehensive analysis for identifying trends. This position designs/enhances data management tools to provide effective and user friendly systems for data tracking. This position is responsible for entering case reviews into the system for tracking and trending.

The essential functions listed below are general examples and not a description of comprehensive duties. Specific duties and responsibilities may vary depending on department or program needs without changing nature or scope of this position or level of responsibility. May be asked to perform other duties as assigned.

• Analyzes, summarizes, and reports on patient safety activity to hospital and department management. Develops and maintains an ongoing mechanism for monitoring action plans and deficiencies and a proactive process for areas at risk with monthly reporting to the hospital’ s committee structure. Develops mechanisms for communication of patient safety related information across the hospital and clinics. Disseminates information regarding and promotes use of “ best practices” and process improvements in patient safety.
• Manages the occurrence/event reporting system across the organization and ensures the integrity of data.
• Provides staff and management education on use of the incident reporting system. This maybe in a large group (50 or more) pre -scheduled or individual one -to -one Just -In-Time training sessions.
• Actively promotes the use of the organization’ s incident reporting system by physicians, nurses and other healthcare providers for reporting adverse patient events.
• Designs and implements ongoing in- service educational presentations that facilitate the understanding and implementation of patient standards within the hospital and clinics.
• Recommends and facilitates change with the hospital in collaboration with Risk Management, Quality, and operational managers/directors to continuously improve patient safety and outcomes of care, based on identified risks.
• Participates in the development of innovative approaches to establishment, enhancement, modification, and/or improvements in a variety of programs related to patient safety.
• Collaborates with others to develop or revise policies and procedures pertaining to patient safety.
• Identifies barriers to the implementation of patient safety programs, recommends and implements corrective measures, and develops and implements improvements to the organization’ s patient safety program.
• Recommends specific actions to eliminate or mitigate the risk of patient harm.
• Reviews all patient incident/event reports and conducts investigations in cooperation with the Risk Management Department for reported events and patient safety issues, including medical record reviews, interviews, equipment investigations and reporting to external agencies.
• Participates in and leads the review of significant adverse events to gain an understanding of the processes for Root Cause Analysis (RCA). Establishes processes to ensure that comprehensive review of events are timely and that information is sufficient for hospital leadership to make a determination regarding regulatory reporting.
• Reviews all patient safety and environment of care standards. Conducts analyses to include; trend, pattern, and other statistically valid techniques to assist in focusing program attention and efforts. Makes recommendations based on findings.
• Routinely monitors all elements of the occurrence/event reporting systems software, including system dictionaries, user securities, software updates, and interface data transaction and reports. Serves as a member of the Hospital Quality Council. Serves as chairperson for the Patient Safety Committee and administratively manages this meeting.
• Serves as a resource for patient care departments and clinics on issues of patient safety and provides patient safety consultation for inquiries from physicians, nurses, or other healthcare practitioners.

• Bachelor' s degree in a wor k -related discipline/field from an accredited college or university

• Three (3) years of progressively responsible and directly related work experience
• CA Registered Nurse (RN) required
• Certified Professional In-Patient Safety (CPPS) preferred

• Ability to collect and record data, evaluate data and statistics, and maintain effective
  

  reporting systems

• Ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing
• Ability to foster effective working relationships and build consensus
• Ability to manage, organize, prioritize, multi -task and adapt to changing priorities
• Ability to mediate and resolve complex problems and issues
• Ability to plan, organize, prioritize, work independently, and meet deadlines
• Ability to provide leadership and influence others and effectively consult, advise, and instruct management and staff regarding appropriate approaches for dealing with difficult patient issues
• Knowledge of basic research and investigation techniques with an ability to interpret data, prepare reports, and ability to propose solutions to difficult situations involved in a potential or actual patient injury
• Knowledge of computer systems and software used in functional area
• Knowledge of medical terminology and related levels of care and treatment
• Knowledge of risk management and quality improvement principles and issues regarding patient safety
• Knowledge of statistical analysis and reporting practices pertaining to quality improvement and program evaluation
• Knowledge of the current theories, principles, practices, and standards of, as well as emerging technologies, techniques, issues, and approaches in clinical practice
• Knowledge of the variables that affect the processes and outcomes of patient healthcare