Overworked, underpaid and unappreciated - RN (Registered Nurse) Sutter Health Employee Review

Sutter provided me a unique opportunity to improve care on a system-wide level while working with talented, collaborative colleagues. The culture encourages innovation, physician leadership, and cross-functional partnership. I've been trusted with meaningful responsibilities, given opportunities to help shape new programs and workflows, and supported by leaders who genuinely care about both patient outcomes and employee development. The organization's mission remains visible in day-to-day work, and there is a strong sense that my contributions can make a real difference.

The size and complexity of the organization can sometimes create competing priorities and slower implementation timelines. Navigating change across a large system requires significant coordination, but this is often a byproduct of the scale and impact of the organization.

Leadership trainings, conferences, educational opportunities, Senior leadership seems to respond to employee feedback, Great organizational transparency and clarity around goals and direction, Front-line leadership receiving recognition more often, Fair (not amazing) compensation and benefits overall, Organization seems to be healthy and growing which is encouraging for job security and retention.

Unsustainable front-line leadership expectations, responsibilities, and tasks without providing support from supervisors or assistant managers specifically in San Francisco campuses, High burnout risk among front-line leaders which is continuing to increase, Growing list of contradicting or conflicting priorities. Patient experience scores have improved greatly in SF but patient quality/safety and employee satisfaction has become the apparent cost of that, Very unreasonable span of control for front-line leaders, i.e. way too many direct reports, Meeting metrics and KPIs at all costs is the message being received. Front-line leaders are left scrambling to reach the data points (regardless of the methods), to get there. In other words, we might be meeting the metrics and KPIs on paper, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the real purpose or reason behind those metrics is being performed. We’re just desperate to keep our jobs, The leadership culture in the last 6-9 months has shifted towards motivation through fear. Fear of losing our jobs or bonuses rather than motivation by providing actual daily support in doing our jobs and genuine concern and encouragement to succeed.