This is long, but let me try to help you understand what you are in for if you are strongly considering this job.
First off, I invested A LOT in this job. Including moving to a completely different location, buying a car, paying travel expenses, among other things. It was a career-changing position I accepted, I assumed it would be treated as such while I worked there.
Anyway, going into the role itself:
There is NO work-to-life balance. As my boss put it, you have to kick off the ground running. Pretty much since the first day I started working I could tell that this job was more than I was expecting.
When I first applied to this role, I assumed (based on the job description) that they just wanted someone who has had experience working on projects, and can communicate with other departments, and basically work together as a team to solve company issues, and present the findings to the higher-ups. That was just the surface, there is a lot more in the job description than they tell you, ask for full details on what you will be doing (it is about a page or 2).
Here is a list of a few things I was not aware of but did what I could to make work: There is a lot of secretarial work that is involved with the job, such as being a fast typer in meetings and marking down all the data in a very short amount of time; filling out patient safety injuries (such as falls) prior to the start of the workday, an hour to 2 hours prior (8 AM-5 PM is the workday, the actual time is 6:30 AM-6:30 PM, on a good day, or 5 AM - 10 PM on a bad day, all exempt). Developing hospital quality committees, which I think was a great way to learn a lot about how hospitals function, but something you should develop an understanding of after solid exposure to how a new entity works, something you do a few months into a new job, not a few weeks in. There were other responsibilities I was not aware of, but was, of course, willing to learn how to do, but was never given a real chance or any guidance on how to go about them, just thrown into with the hopes of making a basket.
I also, unfortunately, started in the busiest month of the year (because it was the start of the new fiscal year). So it was incredibly difficult to reach out to my supervisor, or other colleagues for help on how to do assignments because they were so frantic and busy. This caused delays in my work, uncertainty as to whether or not I was getting things done the right way, miscommunication with my supervisor (who was incredibly overwhelmed and overworked), which lead to hesitancy on whether to ask any questions at all for clarity because I did not want to frustrate her any further. This, among other things, made it a very tough environment to work in.
This eventually led to my termination shortly after starting (about a month), which was stunning, especially after the amount I invested in to move there. This was a termination I think could have been avoided entirely if there was structured guidance by my superior, proper shadowing on how to do my job (which I was told I would get but never received when I started working there). Starting in a time that was less busy and frantic (which was not my fault), and an understanding that it takes time to fully understand how an entire hospital entity operates when you are new somewhere. Which includes knowing the number of quality committees there are, and thoroughly understanding what they all do; the QAPI policy (which is needed in QI of course, but something that takes time to fully understand, and I never really got), leapfrog (again common, but something that takes time to know.), and finally PI projects (which I was never given a chance to work on, on account of all the other stuff, which is very disappointing).
