Understanding a Director of Nursing Job Description

Being a nurse can be an extremely rewarding job from the standpoint of salary and the fulfillment a person gets in helping others. However, there are many nurses, especially those that have been tending to patients for many years, that may be looking for a change. They may not want to get out of nursing entirely, but they may not want to deal with the arduous task of working multiple nursing shifts in a given week. For this reason, many individuals look to segue from a nursing position to something in a more administrative capacity.

Taking on a New Role

Many long time nurses look at a Director of Nursing Job description and find that it is much more agreeable than working a shift as a care providing nurse. One of the reasons why this is so appealing is because a director of nursing job is an administrative position.

What this Job Entails

Rather than a director of nursing dealing with patients on a regular basis, their main job is to deal with the nursing staff. They are responsible for creating schedules, creating budgets, interviewing candidates for open positions on a particular nursing staff and making sure that the nursing department has all the resources necessary to do their job. They may also handle the buying of supplies used directly by nurses or office supplies used by their office staff.

Patient Relations

The oversight in this manner may sometimes require a director of nursing to work with patients, however, this is typically more in terms of getting feedback from patients in terms of how they were treated by the nursing staff. While there may be those rare occasions where director of nursing may have to take over a shift, in most cases, their jobs are relegated to more of an administrative role rather than a hands-on nursing job.

If you been a nurse for a number of years, and you don’t know how long you can continue to work those long nursing shifts, you may look at a director of nursing job as a viable option. Not only is the job completely different, the salary is typically better than the average nurses salary.