Nursing Quality Specialist

Description
Our team members are the heart of what makes us better. At Hackensack Meridian Health we help our patients live better, healthier lives — and we help one another to succeed. With a culture rooted in connection and collaboration, our employees are team members. Here, competitive benefits are just the beginning. It’s also about how we support one another and how we show up for our community.

Together, we keep getting better - advancing our mission to transform healthcare and serve as a leader of positive change.

Description
Our team members are the heart of what makes us better. At Hackensack Meridian Health we help our patients live better, healthier lives — and we help one another to succeed. With a culture rooted in connection and collaboration, our employees are team members. Here, competitive benefits are just the beginning. It’s also about how we support one another and how we show up for our community.

Together, we keep getting better - advancing our mission to transform healthcare and serve as a leader of positive change.

The Nursing Quality Specialist is a highly visible, hands-on role focused on translating quality and safety data into direct, 'at-the-elbow' support for our bedside nursing teams. The primary goal is to elevate clinical practice and improve patient outcomes and experience by implementing and sustaining evidence-based strategies to prevent pressure ulcers, hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), falls, falls with injury, and other hospital-acquired conditions.

The Nursing Quality Specialist champions a culture of safety and continuous improvement by analyzing nurse-sensitive indicator data to identify trends and opportunities. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with nurses the specialist will use this data to model, teach, and embed best practices into daily work. Through this focus on standardizing processes and collaborative problem-solving, the specialist will help nurses strengthen their critical thinking and clinical skills related to proactive harm prevention.

Responsibilties
At-the-Elbow Coaching and Mentorship (60-65% of time):

• Provide a consistent, visible presence on patient care units, engaging directly with nurses during their shifts.
• Facilitate brief, unit-based huddles to discuss recent trends, celebrate successes, and collaboratively problem-solve challenges.
• Conduct collaborative patient rounds with bedside nurses to identify risks for pressure ulcers, falls, and infections.
• Offer real-time, constructive feedback and 'just-in-time' teaching on clinical skills such as but not limited to skin assessments, proper use of fall prevention equipment, and adherence to infection control bundles and other standardized harm prevention protocols.
  5. Model expert practice by demonstrating advanced assessment techniques and evidence-based interventions tied to specific quality metrics and harm prevention goals at the bedside.
• Serve as a coach, resource and mentor, helping nurses think critically through complex patient situations and develop effective, individualized care plans by applying data-informed insights and standardized best practices.
• Collects and evaluates patient care data relative to the issues and identified trends, investigates safety events and conducts performance review activities like records review, focused studies, apparent/root cause analysis (ACA/RCA) and works collaboratively with clinical nurses and nurse leaders in addressing practice gaps.
• Foster a supportive, non-judgmental learning environment where nurses feel comfortable asking questions and seeking guidance.
• Collaborate with unit and organization nurse leaders in monitoring and evaluating nursing standards of practice, policies, procedures, protocols and guidelines at the bedside to determine compliance and gaps.

Facilitation of Nurse-Led Quality Improvement (25-30% of time):

• Analyze organizational and unit-specific nurse-sensitive indicator (NSI) data (example: falls, pressure ulcers, and HAIs) using trends and internal/external benchmarks and translate into actionable information for the bedside team.
• Assist in planning, coordination, implementation, and evaluation of organization's and/or unit's…