Supervisor - Child Life Services

KEY ROLE ACCOUNTABILITIES: • Makes recommendations to the Manager regarding decisions that have a unit/service impact. • Makes day to day decisions regarding unit operations that impact staff. • Makes day to day decisions regarding assessment and interventions that impact patients and families and collaborating staff/colleagues. • Responsible for maintaining up to date mandatory Life Support Training requirements as directed by MoPH and Sidra (e.g. BLS AED etc). Essential Function 1 Oversees, leads, and provides clinical Child Life services • Utilizes knowledge of child development (neonate to adolescent) and family-centered care to: • Design and implement child life interventions including age appropriate preparation and education, procedural support, and a range of therapeutic, expressive, and normalizing play experiences. • Plan and implement teaching and support accordingly. • Initiates, establishes and maintains therapeutic relationships and rapport with children and families in a high-paced acute clinical setting and paces interventions as necessary. • Ensures quality care is consistently provided and documented accurately. • Assesses services gaps and implements action plans and/or directly provides services. • Reviews current trends and literature to inform future program development and ensure quality, outcome-based services are provided. • Advocates within the hospital and community to strategically plan for the psychosocial needs of patients and caregivers. • Ensures child life staff are fully integrated as members of the interdisciplinary health care team. • Participates in and supports department and hospital wide committees to accomplish strategic goals. • Continually assesses scope of practice to ensure high level of performance, and facilitates plan-do-study-act (PDSA) processes to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and quality. • Supervises, develops, and implements programs and activities that apply knowledge of foundations in theories of child development, play, stress, coping, and family systems. • Actively prepares and shares education with patients and families to improve their care experiences and outcomes through various modalities (written resources, technology, hands on experiences, 1:1 interventions, etc.) Essential Function 2 Provides direction, oversight, and supervision to Child Life Specialists delivering therapeutic services to patients and Families • Serves as a professional role model for staff and is an advocate for patients and their families demonstrating behaviors consistent with Sidra values, policies, procedures and guidelines. • Provides supervision and guidance to staff ensuring that care is provided in accordance with core standards and established policies and procedures. • Demonstrates competence in all areas of the interviewing, hiring, training, and supervision process. • Completes all personnel management functions in a timely manner. • In conjunction with Child Life Services leaders, plans, implements, and conducts employee performance reviews to evaluate job performance. • Assumes primary responsibility for therapeutic clinical services provided by Child Life Specialists. • Recognizes staff contributions and accomplishments. • Maintains accurate personnel records. • In conjunction with department leadership, plans and implements strategies to improve staff morale, teamwork, and communication to achieve optimal department productivity. • Provides opportunities for staff to expand their leadership skills. • Aligns personnel resources, coverage, and schedules to provide optimal services to staff, patients, and families. • Ensures the effective orientation, precepting and support of new staff and students. • Supports the retention of staff by creating a healthy work environment that facilitates teamwork, and treats colleagues, patients/families and visitors with dignity and respect at all times. • Ensures relevant information is communicated to all staff effectively and efficiently. • Facilitates individual and team meetings with staff to enhance performance and communication. • Deputizes for the Child Life Services Manager as required. Essential Function 3 Advance Child Life services, evidence, education, and programming • Actively pursues opportunities to expand the evidence and literature base. • Pursues, participates in and leads scholarly activities (publications, research, quality improvement, presentations, etc.) to advance the Child Life profession and best practices. • Develops and sustains own knowledge, clinical skills and professional awareness and maintains a professional profile. • Collaborates with the Child Life Services Manager and Clinical Educators in planning, implementation and evaluation of patient/family and staff education. • Provides education for hospital staff on the principles of child development and family systems to promote effective coping plans, emotional support, and family well-being for patients and families facing a broad range of challenging health care experiences • Leads department staff growth and development through specialized education opportunities. • Leads staff and department engagement in professional organization resources. • Provides direct student program management by: • Ensuring adherence to Sidra expectations and requirements for students • Ensuring all requirements and recommendations for Child Life student program set forth by the ACLP are met • Providing direction to staff to achieve identified student learning goals • Setting expectations for and organizing all aspects of program • Adheres to Sidra’s standards as they appear in the Code of Conduct and Conflict of Interest policies • Adheres to and promotes Sidra’s Values