Columbia St. Mary Ozaukee (Mequon, WI area): A Scary Place To Work—and for anyone to receive medical care! - Registered Nurse Ascension Employee Review

1.0
Nov 13, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

A pretty campus in a suburban setting.

Cons

This hospital cannot seem to make the environment safe and inviting enough to keep adequate staff around. This hospital is constantly losing nursing staff faster than it gains any new staff. The word is out and few people will want to risk their nursing license to work here! Nurses and nursing assistants are regularly forced to take heavier patient loads than is reasonable or safe. This has been getting steadily worse over the past 3-5 years (per report of multiple other nurses I have spoken with who have worked there longer than I did). The two Medical/Surgical (ie “Med/Surg”) Units were forced to combine in Fall 2021 due to lack of nursing staff. A normal Med/Surg nurse on day shift should safely have no more than 4 patients (maybe 5 for a short term fix, but not the norm). The problem is that at this hospital, Med/Surg nurses have been forced to take 5-7 patients regularly on day shift for several years. This is very unsafe! Nurses and CNAs have been forced into unplanned mandatory overtime at least 2 times a week for several years (as reported to me from other staff and from my personal experience). Nursing staff complains that they are overtired, overworked and burned out—so they leave for other jobs elsewhere. This worsens the staffing deficit. There is a passive-aggressive pharmacist and respiratory therapist there too who are difficult to work with. Unit managers come and go within a matter of a few years because they are burned out and don’t feel supported by upper management. The ICU/AAU is the worst! There is a SMALL group of day-shift nurses (who have already stuck out the turmoil for a number of years) who are untrustworthy, cliquey, and mean bullies to other nurses across the whole hospital. They act like they own the place. The ICU/AAU feels like “Lord of the Flies" where the more dominant personalities bully and destroy the others there. These bully nurses scold other nurses like they are disobedient children (which is mental and emotional abuse), then they report the nurses they had just put down to higher management (like a form of dominance and control, such as a "gang mentality")—and yet these bullies are seen doing the very same inappropriate things they scolded other nurses for doing! (Meaning, these bully nurses are complete hypocrites!) Management above the unit managers ignores the toxic bully behavior, and also does nothing about the ongoing severe staffing deficit. Many nurses I knew there have said they do not trust the upper management above the unit managers. I would not recommend that anyone in their right mind go there to work—or for medical care. This is both a very toxic place to work and is very unsafe for patient care! I honestly would not be surprised if this place closes.

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5.0
Feb 24, 2026
Anonymous intern
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Good people, supportive, good growth space for product

Cons

none, all good, supportive and helpful

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Ascension Response
4mo
Hello. Thank you for taking the time to leave us your valued feedback and for sharing such kind words about your time here with us at Ascension. We wish you the best in your next endeavors.
2.0
Jun 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The patient population can be very rewarding to work with, and there can be lots of different job opportunities but very limited advancement with mainly lateral department shifts if a person is looking for change.

Cons

Raises are almost non-existent. The "raise" is a yearly COLA of between 2%-3%. There is no ability to talk to anyone regarding a raise, even the admin staff are fully stonewalled in the overlly corporate monolithic HR style of maintaining "fair" wages. I have worked here for several years and I actually earn less now because my "raises" do not keep up with inflation and the actual cost of living. They maintain their functionality on squeezing as much as they can out of one employer by slowly shifting more job responsibilities called "opportunities" onto you without extra pay or change in title that would get a pay increase. They look to higher level licensed staff to provide more coverage for roles that they won't hire for or cut in departments. They do "organizational restructuring" every 6 months because more staff quit, they don't replace the staff, and tell others to absorb the former FT employees job responsibilities without pay increase and being told not to go into OT.

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