Clinical Nurse Specialist

Exemplifies and promotes excellence in nursing practice in a specialty area through activities such as:--maintaining practice excellence through involvement with selected patient/resident groups .--utilizing practice opportunities to provide expert nursing care to patients/residents or groups of patients, to evaluate nursing practice, and to provide clinical learning activities for nurses.--influencing nursing practice by participating in patient/resident care advocacy issues directed toward improving practice and the quality of patient/resident care.Provides consultation to nurses and other members of the interdisciplinary team, through activities such as:--assisting the members of the interdisciplinary team with clinical decision-making and with planning, implementing, and evaluating patient/resident care.--participating in the development of patient/resident care programs as required.--evaluating the effectiveness of the consultative process for patient/resident outcomes as well as development of the consultee.Provides leadership to nurses, leaders, and other members of the interdisciplinary team in identifying learning needs of patients/residents and staff and determine priorities for educational programs through activities such as:--contributing to an atmosphere conducive to learning.--developing programs to assist nursing staff to meet performance expectations and standards of professional practice.--implementing programs directly, as appropriate, using formal and informal teaching strategies.Supports nursing research to promote clinical knowledge development and research-based clinical practice through activities such as:--demonstrating and promoting critical thinking which leads to the formulation of research questions and hypotheses.--assisting nurses to evaluate their own practice systematically and to identify pertinent care problems for investigation.--critiquing current research findings related to specialty area. Disseminates the research findings and collaborates with colleagues in determining the effectiveness in our practice setting, for those relevant to our setting, designs and implements changes in practice.