Senior Director of Nursing Excellence

Senior Director of Nursing Excellence, Professional Practice, and Innovation

The Senior Director of Nursing Excellence, Professional Practice, and Innovation is responsible for establishing and advancing the organization's nursing excellence strategy through leadership of professional practice, nursing professional development, evidence-based practice, research and clinical inquiry, innovation, quality analytics, and continuous improvement programs. This role provides enterprise oversight and operational responsibility of the Magnet Recognition Program and/or Pathway to Excellence journey, aligning nursing practice, workforce development, quality outcomes, regulatory readiness, and strategic priorities across inpatient, ambulatory, perioperative, procedural, and other care settings where nurses practice.

The Senior Director partners with nursing and interdisciplinary leaders to drive clinical excellence, lead system-level improvement initiatives, strengthen professional governance, advance nursing research and innovation, and build a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and nursing excellence.

Responsibilities include:

• Assists the ACNO/CNO in strategic planning, resource allocation, policy development, and operational decision-making to advance nursing priorities, quality outcomes, and performance.
• Participates in emergency management, incident command, surge response, and business continuity planning as assigned to support organizational readiness and continuity of operations during urgent or evolving events.
• Supports academic partnerships, clinical education, professional development, and nursing research or quality dissemination activities that strengthen recruitment, retention, practice advancement, and organizational learning.
• Fosters a just culture and psychologically safe work environment by supporting leader visibility, structured communication, staff well-being, resilience strategies, learning from events, and open reporting of risks, near misses, and improvement opportunities.
• Promotes a professional practice environment grounded in shared governance, evidence-based practice, ethical nursing standards, and leadership development, and supports nursing excellence through specialty certification, succession planning, and workforce capability building.
• Champions an exceptional patient and family experience by partnering with leaders and teams to strengthen communication, responsiveness, service recovery, and culturally respectful, patient-centered care.
• Lead organizational Magnet Recognition Program and/or Pathway to Excellence designation efforts, including enterprise program leadership, documentation strategy, gap analysis, readiness activities, and appraisal or site visit preparation.
• Develop and execute the enterprise strategic roadmap for nursing excellence, professional practice, and innovation, ensuring alignment of nursing initiatives with Magnet and/or Pathway to Excellence standards and organizational priorities.
• Facilitate Magnet and/or Pathway steering committees, councils, and work groups; educate leaders and frontline staff on nursing excellence principles and expectations; and monitor organizational readiness for designation efforts.
• In collaboration with Quality, oversee performance improvement related to nursing-sensitive indicators through monitoring, trend analysis, reporting, dashboards, accountability structures, action planning, and partnership with unit leaders to sustain outcome improvements.
• Lead implementation and sustainment of the Professional Practice Model and shared governance structures, ensuring frontline nurse participation in practice decisions and promoting nurse autonomy, empowerment, accountability, and a sustained professional practice environment.
• Provide executive oversight for a nursing professional development strategy that supports onboarding, role transition, competency development, certification, lifelong learning, career advancement, preceptor development, mentoring, clinical advancement, and succession planning across nursing services.
• Develop infrastructure supporting evidence-based practice, research, clinical inquiry, innovation, and…