Clinical Nurse Specialist | Palliative & End of Life

Join Interior Health as a regional Clinical Nurse Specialist | Palliative & End of Life and lead the advancement of evidence-based care across the region. In this role you'll influence practice, education, research, and quality improvement to enhance outcomes for patients, families, and healthcare teams.

• Flexible work location within Interior Health.

What We Offer

• Employee & Family Assistance Program
• Employer paid training/education opportunities
• Employer paid vacation
• Employer paid insurance premiums
• Extended health &dental coverage
• Work-life balance

The salary range for this position is $108,147 (min) to $135,184 (midpoint) to $155,461 (max) per annum, based on 1.0 FTE. Interior Health typically establishes salaries within the minimum and midpoint of the salary range based on qualifications, experience of the applicant, and an internal equity review of the salaries of other employees.

How will you make an impact?

The Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) contributes to the development of knowledge, the ongoing improvement of practice, and quality service in the area of specialty through the demonstration of leadership; the development of educational programming; participation in research; and the development of new knowledge, formal and informal education delivery, and expert clinical consultation. The CNS provides leadership and focuses on improving outcomes and quality of care by advancing nursing and interdisciplinary practice in the area of specialty through the use of advanced and evidence-based practice. In consultation with interdisciplinary team members, the CNS will take a lead role in developing frameworks and strategies to facilitate the implementation of best practices for the area of specialty. This includes evaluating research and monitoring, updating, and revising related standards, policies, and procedures.

The Clinical Nurse Specialist is an advanced practice nurse accountable for improving client, population, and health system outcomes by integrating knowledge, skills, and expertise in clinical care, research, leadership, consultation, education, and collaboration. The CNS functions both independently and in collaboration with interdisciplinary team members in all aspects of this role.

What will you work on?

Clinical Practice

The Clinical Nurse Specialist is an independent practitioner within his or her role or identified scope of practice who uses advanced clinical judgment to assess, intervene, and evaluate the clients he or she serves. The Clinical Nurse Specialist uses advanced and expert knowledge, skills, and abilities to develop, coordinate, and evaluate a collaborative plan of care for highly complex and unpredictable clinical situations with the focus on optimizing health and quality of life for the client. The Clinical Nurse Specialist provides direct and indirect care on the basis of his or her specialty knowledge, practice context and specialty area.

• Conducts comprehensive in-depth assessments using advanced nursing knowledge and skills for specific clients, nursing practice situations, or systems.
• Collects data about the context and etiology of conditions that are amenable to CNS interventions.
• Analyzes the complex interaction of sociological, psychological, physiological processes, determinants of health, and clients’ lived experiences to develop, implement, evaluate, and revise plans of care.
• Differentiates actual or potential risks to client safety, autonomy, and quality of care on the basis of assessment and client/population validation.
• Analyzes patterns of client responses and needs within a complex population and develops strategies to create unit-based, organization-based, and system-based changes to optimize health-care outcomes.
• Synthesizes the assessment data using advanced knowledge, experience, critical thinking, clinical inquiry, and clinical judgment to develop a plan of care.
• Designs care plans for clients with highly complex and often unpredictable needs.
• Uses clinical inquiry to identify the need for reassessment, match intervention to etiology, and choose appropriate methods to evaluate outcomes.
• Uses a variety of communication and counselling techniques applicable to specific and highly complex and often unpredictable clinical and team situations.
• Provides consultations in highly complex and often unpredictable clinical situations that require advanced specialized knowledge and skills.
• Measures indicators such as quality of life, client safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, efficacy, client-centered care, cost effectiveness, and appropriateness on a continuous basis.
• Facilitates knowledge translation in a clinical setting to support the care plan in highly complex and often unpredictable situations.
• Collaborates with clients and appropriate inter-professional team members within the clinical area to achieve optimal health outcomes.
• Advocates for client-centered care to meet their needs in highly complex and often unpredictable situations.
• Coordinates healthcare to facilitate safe and seamless transitions among points of care in highly complex and often unpredictable situations.

Systems Leadership

The Clinical Nurse Specialist is a nursing leader. Systems leadership includes the ability to manage change and influence clinical practice and political processes both within and across systems, including advocating for and promoting the importance of access to care and advanced nursing services to clients, nurses, other health professionals, the public, legislators, and policymakers.

• Facilitates inter-professional collaboration internally and externally to the organization to achieve desired client outcomes.
• Leads the development and implementation of
• Standards of nursing practice,
• Practice guidelines,
• Education strategies,
• Quality management,
• Research initiatives, and/or system change.
• Critically analyzes socio-political, demographic, and economic issues, trends, and policies and contributes to the political process to influence change for optimizing health outcomes.
• Integrates knowledge of clients’ perspective during policy development and planning.
• Leads initiatives to promote professional growth, continuous learning, and collaborative practice of nurses and other members of the health-care team to ensure client safety and quality of care.
• Fosters an organizational culture of learning, quality, and safety through preceptorship, role modelling; mentorship; and coaching of nurses, other members of the health-care team, and students.
• Applies knowledge of existing resources and the cost effectiveness of interventions to inform resource decisions at the practice setting, organizational, and system levels.
• Implements strategies to achieve the intended nurse-sensitive client outcomes for a defined population.
• Leads the implementation and integration of the CNS role within the health-care team, organization, and broader health system.
• Applies advanced nursing knowledge and skills to communicate, negotiate, and build coalitions to manage change to resolve conflict.
• Negotiates complex relationships at the individual, practice setting, and organizational levels with the goal of optimizing client outcomes.
• Recognizes potential and existing gaps in clinical care to influence client and organizational decision-making and change.
• Anticipates future changes (e.g., needs related to technology, systems, professional development) and recommends and implements appropriate actions.
• Identifies needs and advocates for the necessary human, material, and organizational system resources for safe client care.
• Develops and leads strategies to promote the uptake of evidence-informed practices to optimize identified client outcomes.
• Participates in key quality and safety initiatives with both internal and external partners from the micro to the macro level and vice versa.
• Evaluates gaps and operational issues at the organizational and community levels to contribute to the development of innovative solutions.
• Collaborates in the development of strategic program planning and evaluation to foster innovative care for specific client populations.

Advancement of Nursing Practice

The Clinical Nurse Specialist leads and fosters the professional development of RNs and nursing practice to maximize the scope and depth of practice leading to optimal client outcomes.

• Models’ professionalism and accountability in all interactions within the health-care team.
• Advocates for and implements change to create safe and healthy workplace environments.
• Advocates for and implements changes that optimize the development of RNs in their roles.
• Evaluates nursing practice against established benchmarks and evidence-informed practice standards.
• Engages in reflective practice to ensure that professional standards of practice are met.
• Improves nursing practice through mentoring, role modelling, consultation, and education.
• Incorporates knowledge from continuous learning to inform, evaluate, and advance nursing practice.
• Disseminates knowledge from continuous learning to advance practice at the local, regional, and national level.
• Promotes the role of the CNS through involvement in academic pursuits, professional associations, and special-interest groups.
• Builds capacity and succession planning by mentoring RNs to pursue graduate studies with a focus on acquiring CNS competencies.
• Promotes the role and the relevance of the CNS to educators, policymakers, administrative decision-makers, regulators, other health-care providers, and the public.
• Identifies and develops indicators for measuring and evaluating the CNS role.
• Promotes ethical nursing practice through the development of strong moral climates in the practice setting.

Evaluation and Research

As a knowledge translator, the Clinical Nurse Specialist searches for, critiques, interprets, synthesizes uses, and disseminates evidence in clinical practice and for quality improvement and client safety initiatives. Development and evaluation of programs and services at various levels are often driving factors behind the Clinical Nurse Specialist practice. The Clinical Nurse Specialist acts either as an investigator or as a collaborator with other members of the health-care team or community to identify, conduct, or support research that enhances or benefits nursing practice.

• Evaluates and critiques current practice against best available evidence/benchmarks.
• Evaluates the need for practice improvement to promote safe, effective, and reliable care that has a positive impact on client and system outcomes.
• Uses systematic approaches to redesign care delivery to promote safe, effective, and reliable care that has a positive impact on client and system outcomes.
• Uses research and outcome data to formulate, evaluate, and/or revise policies, procedures, protocols, client-specific programs, and client standards of care.
• Addresses identified research practice gaps and opportunities through the use of relevant evidence in practice.
• Integrates new evidence into the practice setting and with specific client populations.
• Ensures that ethical standards are promoted and maintained in the practice environment when research and quality improvement initiatives are being conducted.
• Implement and evaluates quality management processes.
• Identifies and incorporates relevant data needed for quality improvement.
• Uses research principles to answer clinical questions to address the quality of client outcomes.
• Uses a wide range of strategies to encourage health-care teams to engage in clinical inquiry.
• Leads and participates in research initiatives that facilitate the generation of new evidence.
• Participates in outcome evaluation of nurse-sensitive indicators.

Competencies adopted from Canadian Nurses Association (2014). Pan-Canadian Core Competencies for the Clinical Nurse Specialist. © Canadian Nurses Association. Reprinted with permission. Further reproduction prohibited.

In alignment with IH’s Occupational Health & Safety Program, maintain a healthy and safe work environment through complying with and implementing applicable Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, responding to requests from WSBC, identifying hazards and communicating risks, ensuring compliance with employee training, conducting effective incident investigations and implementing required corrective actions.

Performs other related duties as assigned.

Honouring Interior Health’s commitment to Truth and Reconciliation and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), and Pursuant to Section 42 of the BC Human Rights Code, preferential consideration and/or hiring will be given to qualified applicants who self-identify as Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, or Inuit).

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