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RN Operations Manager, NICU

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Our Neonatal and Infant Critical Care Unit is a 35-bed unit that is not like a typical NICU.  We do not have many premature babies whose main medical issue is to eat and grow so they can go home. Instead, our patients are the sickest babies in the Greater Los Angeles area and beyond, who come to us for

  1. Surgical intervention to live (gastrointestinal, cardiothoracic, ophthalmology, to name a few)
  2. ECMO — Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (basically, a heart-lung machine).


The Role of the Operations Manager in the NICCU

The Operations Manager in the NICCU focuses on ensuring the nurses have what they need to provide this highly-specialized care to the babies in our unit.

This means:

  • Working with team members the NICCU unit
  • Collaborating hospital-wide
  • Coordinating staffing and scheduling
  • Maintaining attendance and payroll
  • Purchasing supplies and equipment
  • Supervising and implementing the unit budget
  • Assisting in performance assessment and development of staff

The NICCU Ops Manager is also an integral member of the team working on transition planning for the New Hospital Building.

A NICU Operations Manager Gives Her Perspective

"I love my job!

"The nurses in this unit are some of the most amazing nurses I’ve ever seen!  As a result, instead of thinking of myself as a nurse manager, I think of myself as a person who assists our compassionate nurses.    

"We have RNs who have just started as new graduate nurses and some whom have been working at this for 35 years!  They have published articles in nursing journals, presented and lectured at national conferences, and participated in nursing research.

"Nurses from our unit planned and coordinated a dynamic NICU Nursing Conference that, in recent years, has become so well-attended by neonatal specialty RNs in the greater community that, this year, we had to move off-site because our hospital's Auditorium in The Saban Research Institute wouldn't hold everyone.

"These nurses continue to impress me on a daily basis. I love what I do!"

- Sonja Alli-Casella
NICCU Operations Manager