Skills Needed for Nurses

Part 2 - Skills needed

BRIAN W: You have to have a strong clinical background. You have to understand the processes, the disease processes that you’re talking about.

BARNEY L: The most important characteristic is that they are good critical thinking, good problem solving, enjoy teaching – and doing that telephonically.

LUCI P: The biggest challenge probably was all the computer work because, as a supervisor in my last position, I didn’t do any type of work with computers.

BETSY F: Having strong computer skills is, um, really a plus when you’re coming into an environment like this.

BARNEY L: But we look for other things, too, which I think are equally important.  We look for system-savvy, people that can come in and actually learn how to use the system, um, we look for a team player, somebody that really wants to be part of a team,

BRIAN W: I look for interpersonal relation. You know, how well do they relate to others? That’s something very, very important. When we don’t have the physical contact, we don’t have those nonverbal cues, all of the other communication skills become much more important.

BARNEY L: And we look for people that have really good critical thinking skills, good problem-solving skills, and, most importantly, can, uh, adapt to change.

BRIAN W: We’re always getting new work-flows. We’re always getting something added in to what we do. We don’t go about doing those things lightly. We don’t want to add more work, we just want to make things better.

BETSY F: You have to be very good at interviewing, using motivational interviewing and really listening to what the member has to say, and then, um, a lot of times repeating it back to them, so that, um, you can make sure that you understand exactly what they’re going through.