Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an intensive care unit clinical nurse specialist and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

An Intensive care unit clinical nurse specialist is tasked with the primary role of using his/her advanced nursing skills and knowledge to care for patients who are in critical condition and with high-risk life-threating health problems. They help to give complex assessments and treatment to the critically ill patients.

Beside that primary role of caring and treatment of patients in ICU they can get to perform other clinical duties like; assisting physicians in performing certain clinical procedures, conducting diagnostic medicals tests, treating patients wounds, providing advanced life support to patients, patient advocacy and responding to life-saving situations in accordance with the nursing clinical standard procedures.

Core Skills Required to be an Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

An intensive care unit clinical nurse specialist should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Organized Workplace:

Organized Workplace is a vital characteristic that helps the business to thrive for long term due to the sense of structure and order which efficiently promotes the team spirit.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist must be organized in the general organizing, planning, communication, time management, scheduling, coordinating resources and meeting deadlines to support the staff in being well structured and run the company successfully.

Negotiation Skills:

Negotiation Skills are a deliberative process by which people settle their differences through an acceptable agreement to both parties to co-exist without argument and dispute in the workplace.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist must learn to resolve any disputes that arise in the workplace using the principles of fairness, seeking mutual benefit and maintaining a cordial relationship that builds a success at the workplace.

Teamwork Skills:

Teamwork is the process of collaboratively working with a group of people with an aim to achieve a set goal within a business ensuring that the staff and management cooperate using their skills and provide constructive feedback.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist needs to exercise effectiveness and understanding in creating teamwork using the right techniques in an environment of trust and cooperation with the aim of increasing productivity, higher morale, and a fulfilled workforce.

Multi-Tasking:

Multi-Tasking allows one to juggle and perform more than one task at a time without losing track of what you are working on or dropping the ball.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist must learn the trick of multitasking and help the staff balance the competing demands of their time and energy that they are expected to handle multiple priorities every day without compromising on the effectiveness of the work done.

Collaborating with others:

Collaborating is willingly working with one another and cooperating in whatever task one is assigned without behaving poorly or having an attitude change that hurts others.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist is meant to collaborate with all workers and management both male and female without causing frustrations or sidelining any worker or delaying their promotion from any informal conversations where most decisions are often made.

Empathy:

Empathy is the understanding of another person's condition from their perspective by placing yourself in their shoes and feeling what they are feeling.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist ought to practice empathy with his staff by learning to be a good listener and understanding what his employees are going through and choosing to feel it with them through the use of imagination and accommodate them.

Following Directions:

Following Directions is the skill of carefully considering the given instructions and following them closely without fail.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist must ensure that his workers are paying attention and listening to instructions provided as well as taking careful steps in doing what they are supposed to do and understand what it means to the business and bring satisfaction to their superiors.

Personal Drive:

Personal Drive is a combination of desire and energy in its simplest form directed at achieving a goal in whatever you have set your heart to accomplish.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist needs to creatively design ways that drive the staff to carry out their work without wasting time by helping them understand and develop their self-motivation skills that assist them to take control of many different viewpoints of their life.

Persuading Others:

Persuading others is making sure your best ideas get a fair hearing without manipulating others or using trickery.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist needs to creatively learn how to introduce new ideas that will boost growth for the company without managing the staff or put them under pressure with more work but with manageable goals that the employees will delight working on and grow as they do.

Using Common Sense:

Using Common Sense is the ability to see what is missing in a situation or a project and supplying it without necessarily being assigned or asked to do it.

An Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist needs to creatively train his employees always to see the missing element that is typically crucial in any workplace or project and take the opportunity to do business out of it.

Hard Skills Required to be an Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

An intensive care unit clinical nurse specialist should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.

Intensive Care Unit Clinical Nurse Specialist: Hard skills list

Adolescent Care
Administration of Medications
Advance Cardia Life Support (ACLS)
Antibiotic Therapy
Assisting in Surgery
Assisting With Exams and Treatment
Basic Life Support (BLS)
Bedside Monitoring
Bladder Irrigation
Blood Administration
Blood Glucose Testing Devices
Cardiac Care
Care of Gastrostomy Tube
Catheter Care
Catheterization
Central Line Dressing
Certifications
CCU
Charge Nurse
Chemotherapy Administration
Clinical Research
Communication
Critical Care
Data Management
Dialysis
Discharge
Documentation
Dressing Application
Dressing Change
Dry Sterile Dressing Application
Electronic Health Records
Emergency Room
Family Education
Geriatric Care
Healthcare
Healthcare Management
Healthcare Software
Home Care
Hospice Care
ICU
Infection Control
Injections
Inpatient Care
Interpersonal
Intramuscularly Injections
IV Therapy
Lab Testing
Licensure
Maintaining Patient Charts
Management of Open Wounds
Maternal Care
Medical/Surgical
Medications
Monitoring Vital Signs
Neonatal Care
Obstetrics
Operating Room
Pain Management
Patient Assessment
Patient Care
Patient Education
Patient Evaluation
Patient History
Patient Monitoring
Patient Safety
Pediatric Care
Physical Assessments
Prenatal Care
Psychiatric Care
Record Keeping
Rehabilitation
Seizure Precautions
Shunt Dressing Change
Specific Gravity
Sterile Scrub Sponge Change
Suctioning of the Tracheotomy Tube
Surgical
Surgery Preparation
Suture Removal
Team Work
Telemetry Care
Time Management
Total Parenteral Nutrition and Lipids
Tracheotomy Care
Transparent Wound Dressings
Urine Testing
Venipuncture
Wet Sterile Dressing
Withdrawal of Blood Samples
Wound Irrigation

Related Articles