Pros
Day shift gets a lot of freebies from the company. For example, king of pops and pizza. There's also cookouts from time to time and the managers serve you good food. The cafeteria has a large selection of foods.
Cons
Oh boy. Unsafe patient ratios (1:10). Promises from management that aren't kept ( We won't give you an admission after 6:30; patient comes up symptomatic and with hypertension at 6:55). Hard to take a vacation, but the managers take vacation every other week (No joke). Strict call out policy (work until you die). You don't get a lunch break, and they don't really care. But you'll get in trouble if you don't and won't get paid the extra money for missed 30 minute lunch. Some charge nurses will go into the office and you won't see them the rest of the night. Some will go out to smoke every 30 minutes with the secretary and then go straight into a patients room smelling like an ashtray (I work with an at risk population by the way, so I wish I was exaggerating here). None of computers work half the time, the dynamaps work sometimes if it's your lucky day. Other floors have more favoritism and there's a clear managerial preference over our floor, and they bully us to take more admissions when we're already full so that they can be free for the rest of the night. So we don't have the supplies we need or the support we need in order to provide safe patient care. There's also a lack of diversity hospital wide and racism from coworkers that is unadressed by superiors. New nurses are teaching new nurses so things are also being missed. In my contract, I was told that I was not allowed to precept until I had been working for one year. About two months out of the residency, I was given a preceptee and was told that I wouldn't even be paid for it; not even later when I am qualified by policy to accept a resident. I was told, " Everyone does it, so I need to too". People are leaving left and right, and the inability to keep staff on the unit will affect your evaluation and your raise. So you might never get a raise because management can't keep their staff; and the manager has even stated that she doesn't even care about that. When you are on RAD (requested leave if the census is low), you can be called in at 5:30; even if you live an hour away to be there for 30 minutes to an hour. If you accidentally forget you're working that day, which is very possible because they change the schedule all the time, they will say that you can be fired without even calling you first to make sure if there was a mistake. Make sure you have a friend that can text or call you to have your back. I don't really see any advancement in my career here either. Pay doesn't match the current market for nurses.
