I'm the new Director of Nursing—why do I feel like a fraud?

You did not choose ignorance. You chose responsibility, and ignorance came with it. Every new director sits in meetings full of unfamiliar language — budget lines, compliance codes, staffing ratios that used to be someone else's worry. That gap between what you know and what the job demands is real. It is not proof you are unfit. The fraud you fear is not deception. It is simply the space between your old skill and your new duty. That space closes only through work, not through waiting to feel confident. Your team faces the same space in their own new posts. Name it together instead of hiding it alone in every meeting. You are not meant to master budgets and politics by instinct. You are meant to build a method: learn what you must, delegate what others know better, and ask plain questions without apology. Do this with your team, not in secret. That is the whole task in front of you.