Pros
Community hospital atmosphere. Many people have worked there for years and years, so you work along the same individuals for a long period of time and get to know everyone well. The patients in general are a good population to work with. They have a great tuition reimbursement plan to further your education. The CEO is former RN at the hospital who has worked her way through leadership roles to CEO. It is inspiring to see her advancement and there is definitely room for growth within the organization. The recent merge with lifebridge health has brought a lot of changes but most of them are a direct improvement for the patients ( i.e. New services, specialties, offering more to the community) and for the employees with improved benefits, increased tuition reimbursement. More money for work place events/activities to boost staff morale.
Cons
There is a lot of favoritism. Unfortunately that means that sometimes the wrong people get moved into positions of leadership or middle management just because they have been with the organization a long time, or are socially connected well. Not everyone who has been a nurse for 10 years, is well suited for management just because they have been with the company for a while. I think that has gotten the management situation into trouble, but now that they have merged with lifebridge there has been a lot of adjustments to the leadership team. Understaffing is an issue, you get pulled often to other units leaving yours short and you seem to be treated unfairly on other units and get the worst assignment while there. In addition, there is a lot of talking behind other people's backs, people act friendly to you and then talk about you poorly when your not there. Your nursing judgement and interventions or lack there of is always on the chopping block for evaluation by other nurses who think you should have done differently. My orientation as a brand new nurse years ago, was very challenging. I left many days in tears and wanted to quit because the senior nurses were so harsh with me and judge mental. The CEO is great-- but I think a negative is that she has 4 immediate family members working in various departments around the hospital and they are treated above the others by their direct supervisors and a direct source of information to their mother. Which sometimes is a good thing and makes way for changes, but other times is not.
