Pros
Generally, my coworkers on the floor were awesome, which was often the saving grace on days where equipment broke down and things piled up. Almost everyone I ever asked for help in learning a process was happy to pause in what they were doing to guide me through it. Everyone there cared about doing things the right way in the name of patient safety. It's not the kind of work you get into for the fun of it, so the people who were there were very intentional, and even in high-stress situations there was a tremendously cooperative mood. Training overall was generally pretty solid when it came to basics, and there are some avenues for specialization among the various things a person can learn there. If you like the kind of work where you're doing a little (or a lot) of everything, sterile processing is worth considering as there are a lot of different processes to be learned and they try to rotate people throughout the week so we all can stay on top of them. If you're like me and are more efficient when enabled to focus on one task/area at a time, they do also try to make that happen, staff count vs. workload permitting. For example, I was trained in endoscope reprocessing under an incredibly competent individual who pretty much lived in that area of the department, and it was one of my favorite places to help out and back up for, and get into a good work rhythm. I was also enjoyed the clinical rounds because you get a little of everything on a smaller scale than the rest of the department so you're usually able to actually finish your workload, which is a gratifying feeling. When I wanted to explore other shift options that would better accommodate my disability, management readily worked with me; I was able to transfer to another hospital in the network and they very kindly kept me in mind when a spot opened at the starting hospital I had wanted to stay at. They were also generally really gracious about allowing people to have flexibility about their shift start/end times, there were a lot of people who had split-shift hours instead of the usual first or second. Pretty solid benefits overall, and while the pay for the area was not great, it was at least livable. I will point out, management does fight to get as much as they can for wage increases for their people, which goes a long way to feeling like they're actually looking out for us. The company overall is pretty chill about things like tattoos and fun hair. They didn't used to be, but their employee retention suffered a lot for it, and patient feedback overwhelmingly indicated that they don't really care if the people caring for them have those things going on as long as they're getting proper care, so the company amended its policies accordingly. That was nice. It's a lot to learn but it's a good foot in the door in healthcare, that you don't generally need specialized education for out of the gate.
Cons
It was kind of a running joke that people go to IU Health to train and then move on to a similar job that pays significantly better elsewhere; pay was decent for Indiana overall but not especially good for Indianapolis proper. Equipment that frequently breaks down is patched up rather than replaced because of the new hospital that's going up in a few years. It's understandable that they don't want to invest in new equipment at this stage, especially given the expense, but not being able to operate at optimum capacity does create slowdowns and pile-ups. Staffing shortages are pretty much constant. Lot of high turnover. This has a tremendous impact on work pileups and overall stress. The work could often feel unending or impossible to truly keep up with, which for me personally was a little demoralizing at times. It's a hospital, obviously there's always gonna be something going on, but it's depressingly rare to feel truly 'caught up'. It's physically demanding work, more so than some manufacturing job positions I've held. This, in combination with the intense vigilance needed to make sure everything that could touch a patient's body is up to standard, can make it very quickly exhausting physically and mentally. This is more of a general job drawback rather than anything to do with IU Health in particular, but it bears keeping in mind if you're new to sterile processing. Management does play favorites and can get petty. I had a family situation come up in regard to a holiday that messed with the previously workable timing that had been planned out, and when someone who had missed out on shift signup offered and WANTED to take my shift, it was denied by a supervisor whose only given reason for not approving it was literally "I don't want to," and followed it up by bragging about their holiday plans in front of me. If they like you, you're fine, and you'll be put to work in the areas that you're good at or less stressed in, but if they don't, it'll be pretty obvious. I've seen people who'd had excellent rapport with higher-ups for years get snubbed for things like asking for an extra person in their area. I've seen others be denied help or repeatedly assigned to obscure areas they had no expertise in multiple days in a row while everyone else was being rotated, to the point where there were panic attacks happening. They track productivity in their system, so doing this to someone is absolutely a set-up to fail. I've been on both sides, and count myself lucky to have been pretty much just ignored by the one person who didn't like me, but your mileage may vary. While most coworkers were great, some could be condescending or gossipy, and because of how understaffed we were, people just looked the other way about it for the most part.