Overview
The Director of Clinical Education is responsible for leading the design, standardization, implementation, and continuous improvement of clinical education across all prelicensure nursing programs, locations, and modalities of educational delivery. It is responsible for the consistency, compliance, delivery, and quality of clinical education in prelicensure nursing.
The Director of Clinical Education establishes and owns the standard processes, clinical experience frameworks, faculty expectations, and evaluation structures that govern prelicensure clinical education. This role does not oversee Intensives programming for online students. The Director of Clinical Education is a secondary/dotted line supervisor for location based Program Chair, who manages day-to-day clinical faculty oversight and student clinical experiences. The Director monitors compliance and quality across all clinical experiences and works collaboratively with, and through, prelicensure nursing Chairs to meet desired outcomes.
REQUIREMENTS
- An earned Doctorate in a nursing related field; or an earned doctorate (in a non-nursing specific field) with a graduate level nursing degree.
- Active, unencumbered Registered Nurse (RN) license in state of primary residency, with eligibility for licensure in additional states as needed.
- Minimum of five (5) years of professional nursing practice experience, with a preference of experience in clinical settings relevant to prelicensure nursing clinical education.
- Minimum of three (3) years of experience in nursing clinical education leadership
- Experience developing or implementing system-wide clinical education standards, SOPs, or evaluation frameworks preferred.
- Experience with clinical education across multiple campuses, regions, or delivery modalities preferred.
- Experience supporting or leading an accreditation self-study or site visit preferred.
The salary range for this position is $119,000 to $161,000.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Clinical Education Standards, Process, and Experience Design
- Develop, implement, and maintain system-wide standard operating procedures (SOPs) for prelicensure clinical education, including clinical placement processes, faculty assignment protocols, student orientation requirements, and clinical site expectations.
- Design and standardize the clinical experience framework for all prelicensure programs, ensuring alignment with program learning outcomes, accreditation standards (HLC, ACEN, or CCNE), and state board of nursing requirements across all operating jurisdictions.
- Establish clear, written expectations for clinical faculty performance, student supervision standards, patient safety protocols, and documentation requirements that are applied consistently across all clinical sites system-wide.
- Develop and maintain standardized clinical evaluation tools and rubrics for student clinical performance, clinical faculty effectiveness, and clinical site quality, ensuring alignment with accreditation evidence requirements.
- In collaboration, ensure clinical experiences satisfy program and course learning objectives, reinforce concepts introduced in the didactic portion of courses, and provide students the opportunity to observe and apply clinical skills in a hands-on setting.
- Ensure clinical education standards account for the variation across delivery modalities, campus regions, and partner program tracks, and that equivalent clinical quality is maintained regardless of site or modality.
- Develop and maintain internal definitions of appropriate clinical site types, settings, and experiences required for each prelicensure course and program level, mapping those definitions to curriculum objectives to ensure students receive the correct clinical experience at the correct point in their program.
- Ensure that site-to-course mapping is used as the basis for clinical placement decisions, affiliation agreement prioritization, and capacity planning across all regions.
Clinical Site Support and Partnership Management
- Partner with clinical operations to support clinical experience development, needs assessments, and maintenance.
- Implement mechanisms to support partner education to optimize student clinical learning experiences.
- Collaborate with clinical operations and program leadership to resolve clinical placement challenges in a timely manner.
- Support partnership initiatives for clinical development as a clinical education subject matter expert.
- Partner with the VP of Clinical Operations and their team to align clinical site quality standards with institutional clinical operations strategy and resources.
- Monitor clinical hour capacity system-wide to ensure compliance of clinical education experiences.
- Proactively identify and address needs prior to negative effect on student progression or compliance standards.
- Travel, when needed, to support partnership and clinical development.
Preceptor and Clinical Faculty Standards
- In partnership with Academic Compliance, establish system-wide preceptor qualification standards, onboarding requirements, and validation processes for all prelicensure clinical sites.
- Develop and implement a preceptor development and recognition program that supports the growth and retention of high-quality clinical preceptors across all regions.
- Establish expectations for clinical faculty and preceptor competency validation, ongoing professional development, and performance evaluation that are applied consistently through Program Chairs.
- Provide guidance and resources to Program Chairs to support clinical faculty onboarding, orientation, and site-specific training.
- Ensure all clinical faculty complete orientation and onboarding requirements in alignment with university expectations.
- In partnership with Program Chairs, monitor preceptor and clinical faculty performance data across sites and support corrective action when standards are not met.
Clinical Compliance and Accreditation
- In partnership with BI and Clinical Ops, establish and maintain a system-wide clinical education data dashboard that tracks placement capacity, clinical hour completion, preceptor availability, site quality, and student clinical outcomes by program, region, and site.
- Analyze clinical education data to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities for improvement and present findings with recommendations to university leadership.
- Lead systematic clinical education review cycles aligned with accreditation and University program review requirements.
- Incorporate feedback from clinical site partners, preceptors, Chairs, faculty, and students into continuous improvement of clinical education standards and processes.
- Benchmark Herzing's prelicensure clinical education practices against peer institutions and accreditation best practices to identify opportunities for advancement.
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS
- Must be able to remain in a stationary position 75% of the time.
- Must be able to occasionally move around the work location.
- Constantly operates office and/or teach equipment which may include computers, copiers, fax machines, audio/visuals.
- Frequently uses voice and hearing to communicate with students, staff, or colleagues face-to-face or over the telephone.
- Visually or otherwise identify, observe, and assess.
- Occasionally move, carry, or lift 10 pounds.
- Must be able to travel 20% of the time.