Pros
I've worked here for the past two years. In that time, COVID has changed the landscape much. When I started it was a very nurturing enviornment for a baby nurse to learn - I was accepted into the RN residency program in fall 2000 and it was an amazing place to learn and grow. Pay was about on par with local hospitals and benefit packages were sufficient.
Cons
The largest problem has been that Providence (Everett) management has been at war with the nurse's union to the point where they increasingly do not communicate and work with the nurses (through our union) and slowly over time things have gone from bad to worse. I really saw how horrible our union was treated during contract negotiations when they offered the nursing staff a 1% raise and were going to take away benefits such as our EIB, or earned income benefits which are accrued and pay out when we are sick beyond the first set number of hours - a critical benefit that we had had in our contract. When I started, we enjoyed a 4:1 ratio of patients to RN on our orthopedic floor. Most of the Med Surg floors were similar. It has gone from that ratio to 5:1 and most recently to 6:1 as of February 2023. I finally left because I did not feel safe with the patient loads they were heaping onto the RNs. The company has been hemorrhaging nurses and has not incentivized them to stay with the company nor has it provided updates on how to remediate the problem. The CEO left a few months ago and the new CEO has not discussed staffing issues for several months and only emailed the employees to discuss how a TikTok video claiming the RN's had to take 8 patients one night was false (I've heard the video was accurate in that all the nurses called out the next day when they found out they were going to be given 8 patient loads a second time). While 6:1 ratios are the new normal there, 7:1 have happened here and there as well (as well as a very few 8:1 times). Providence has not discussed any plan with the workers on how to get out of this problem. They are loading the staff up with so many patients that they quit and leave and go to other jobs. We all know the CEOs and management make millions of dollars (despite being non-profit, or not for profit or whatever) and so it feels pretty slimy to work for an organization that really does not put it's frontline workers first. Providence may be the one reason that safe staffing legislation actually gets passed because it is becoming so dangerous to work there that people are leaving for safer environments. Many managers on the floors have left Providence now (we have lost three managers (all in the same position) recently and the position is once again open all within a year's time - the reason why? They also are not being told what is going to change to make things better and so mid-level managers are leaving. Now, take all this with a grain of salt because this is being posted on 2/2023 and things may change at any time, but I could not work with this organization until they own up to their mistakes, treat the RN's union with respect and dignity and see that they have squandered their value resources - their workers by not putting them as a priority. I genuinely wonder if the hospital will be able to stay open or will have to close floors in the future.