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HEALTHCARE
NEWS
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Advocate redesigns the nurse manager role
By Paige Twenter
A
dvocate Health recently reimagined the role of nurse
managers, said Jane Dus, DNP, RN, senior vice president and
chief nursing officer of the system's Midwest region.
Nurse managers are oen balancing large spans of control, she
said, and as nurse managers lead staff, they simultaneously manage
patients, throughput, quality, budgets and everyday issues. Advocate
employs about 44,000 nurses and Dr. Dus leads 22,000 of them.
Over the last 18 months, Advocate asked its nurse managers, What do
you do that you shouldn't be doing? What do you like to do? What's
taking up your time?
"We know that they are our future leaders, so we stepped back and
took time" to examine their roles, Dr. Dus told Becker's.
e questions revealed six untapped areas to help frontline leaders.
ese included defining scope and span of control, such as how many
people report to them; managing pace of change; and minimizing the
burden of onboarding.
e fourth focus was elevating nurses to practice at the top of their
licenses, which involved removing tasks they shouldn't be doing, such
as filling out repair skips or tracking down equipment, Dr. Dus said.
e final two areas of improvement were reviewing auditing
processes and strengthening the partnership between nurses and
the support department.
"e things that I'm most proud of is that we've aligned on standard
scopes now that all our managers — assistant managers, managers,
directors — have the same job descriptions, the same scopes, we're all
doing the same job," Dr. Dus said.
From these discoveries, the system created a manager relief program,
which is a float pool for nurses to "stretch" into a manager role for a
few weeks or months to stabilize a unit.
Before, when a nurse manager le, another nurse manager of one unit
would typically be assigned a second unit. Now, nurse managers can
continue to focus on their own unit while a float nurse manager helps
out until a permanent nurse manager is hired.
"at has been very successful," Dr. Dus said. "ey do such a good
job, but it's a really unique role, having these managers float around
and fill in these open positions. It really just helps support our
frontline managers."
Since discovering these opportunities and acting on them, Advocate
has seen a decline in nurse manager turnover and a stabilization in
staffing levels.
To continue to support its workforce, Advocate is piloting several AI
models, including an ambient nurse listening pilot. n
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Zimmer Biomet. zimmerbiomet.com (pgs. 11-14)
