Lactation Specialist RN

Mercy Medical Center, a Dignity Health member, has been building a rich history of care in our community for more than 100 years. We have grown from a small one-story wooden structure into a major healthcare provider with a new 186-bed main campus, offering the latest in facility design and technology. Mercy also operates Outpatient Centers, a Cancer Center and several rural clinics.

Wherever you work throughout our system, you will find faces of experience with dedication to high quality, personalized care. Joining our 1,300 employees, 230 physicians and many volunteers, you can help carry out our commitment to providing our community with the excellence they have come to associate with Mercy Medical Center.

One Community. One Mission. One California 

As a Lactation Professional, you will be a compassionate expert, empowering new parents to achieve their lactation goals and promoting optimal infant nutrition.

Every day, you will provide evidence-based education, assessment, and individualized support prenatally and postpartum. You'll address feeding challenges, develop personalized care plans, and collaborate with healthcare providers to ensure integrated support.

To be successful in this role, you will possess deep clinical knowledge, exceptional communication, empathy, and patience, adapting strategies to individual needs for successful infant feeding and improved health outcomes.

• Facilitates the coordination of the journey to Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative. Provides oversight for the communication process for all certification visits or reviews. Ensures all required documents are prepared and ready for certification review of program. Serves as the leader for certification reviews, providing the coordination of information, scheduling, patient care area visits, chart requests, and follow up. Summarizes and presents findings of any survey activity to leadership.
• Serves as the site expert for all regulatory standards, maintaining current knowledge for standards/requirements changes/updates relating to perinatal education and lactation practices.
• Develop, coordinate and implement (teach) educational programs based upon on identified needs of nursing staff, Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative and TJC educational standards and guidelines. Develop and implement educational classes for community stakeholders, patients and families and staff related to lactation. Provide didactic and hands-on training for Family Birth Center staff to support patients during breastfeeding.
• Revise and update patient order sets, pathways, standards of care, and patient education materials with collaboration from appropriate multidisciplinary persons. Serve as a role model by participating in the delivery of care. Provides education materials to physician offices for distribution to patients
• Function as clinical resource to staff, patients and medical staff in all areas where the patients may be served (ED, Med-surg, and clinics). Follow up and monitor documentation of related to lactation. Address areas of improvements and develop a performance improvement action plan(s). Demonstrates clinical knowledge and skills in area of service.
• Encourage communication of learning needs by all divisions of the perinatal care providers and set priorities for these learning needs.

Required

• Bachelors Of Nursing and Two years of leadership experience or nursing education experience in OB nursing specialties. , upon hire and
• Minimum of five years experience in L&D or Postpartum nursing and
• Experience with physician relations and patient experience and
• Registered Nurse: CA, upon hire and
• Basic Life Support - CPR, upon hire and
• Advanced Cardiac Life Support, upon hire and
• Neonatal Resuscitation Program, upon hire and
• International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, upon hire or
• Certified Lactation Counser, upon hire and
• Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator, within 6 - months or
• Certified Childbirth Educator - CCE PCE, within 6 - months or
• Certified Childbirth Educator - ACBE, within 6 - months and
• Certified Doula, within 6 - months
• Knowledge of breastfeeding care and education principles
• Flexible Schedule/hours

Preferred

• Masters Of Nursing, upon hire
• Knowledge of program plan development, adult learning skills and familiarity with regulatory and accrediting agency standards

Please be advised that this location requires quarterly American Heart Association (AHA) Resuscitation Quality Improvement (RQI) competency certification post-hire.  This ongoing competency is required through resources internal to the facility; outside RQI competency resources are not acceptable for CommonSpirit Health compliance requirements.

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