The Charge Nurse serves as the on‑shift leader for the unit, supporting safe, high‑quality care and ensuring smooth daily operations. This role provides clinical guidance to staff, promotes effective communication, and helps maintain a positive, professional practice environment. The Charge Nurse partners closely with the Nurse Manager and acts as a resource for patients, families, and the interprofessional team. This position upholds the same professional nursing standards and expectations outlined for all Registered Nurses, while adding leadership responsibilities that support patient outcomes, staff development, and unit performance.
Principal Duties and Responsibilities
Serves as the shift supervisor and key member of the unit’s leadership team
Provides clinical support, direction, and problem‑solving for staff throughout the shift
Rounds on patients and families to ensure safety, satisfaction, and quality care
Collaborates with the Nurse Manager on scheduling, staff development, and maintaining clinical competence
Supports a healthy professional practice environment and promotes teamwork
Ensures care delivery aligns with policies, evidence‑based standards, and the organization’s nursing mission, vision, and values
Applies strong critical thinking, clinical reasoning, organization, and leadership skills
Minimum Education, Training, and Experience Required
Active Kentucky RN license
Minimum of two years acute‑care hospital experience
BCLS and ACLS required
PALS as required by department
Work Experience
Education
Founded in 1924 in Louisville, Kentucky, Baptist Health is a full-spectrum health system dedicated to improving the health of the communities it serves. The Baptist Health family consists of nine hospitals, employed and independent physicians, and more than 400 points of care, including outpatient facilities, physician practices and services, urgent care clinics, outpatient diagnostic and surgery centers, home care, fitness centers, and occupational medicine and physical therapy clinics.
Baptist Health’s eight owned hospitals include more than 2,300 licensed beds in Corbin, Elizabethtown, La Grange, Lexington, Louisville, Paducah, Richmond and New Albany, Indiana. Baptist Health also operates the 410-bed Baptist Health Deaconess Madisonville in Madisonville, Kentucky in a joint venture with Deaconess Health System based in Evansville, Indiana. Baptist Health employs more than 23,000 people in Kentucky and surrounding states.
Baptist Health is the first health system in the U.S. to have all of its hospitals recognized by the American Nursing Credentialing Center with either a Magnet® or Pathway to Excellence® designation for nursing excellence.
Baptist Health’s employed provider network, Baptist Health Medical Group, has nearly 1,500 providers, including more than 750 physicians and more than 740 advanced practice clinicians. Baptist Health’s physician network also includes more than 2,000 independent physicians.
Learn more at BaptistHealth.com.
