registered nurse

behavioral specialist

research assistant

senior research assistant

clinical research coordinator

Cincinnati Childrens Hospital

......that's right, I resigned from Cincinnati Children's this past July (2013) when I moved out of state, after thirteen years of solid, stable employment. 

A typical day at work could be hair-raising every now and then. Sure, there's the demanding parents and whining children. There's the brown-nosing co-workers, office politics, and oh yes, the policies. I saw it all during all my years there in about three different positions.

HOWEVER!

Not until after I left CCHMC and started new employment at a "down south" hospital did I recognize what a true gem this institution is. 

No job is perfect. Cincinnati Children's isn't perfect. But Epic (scheduling/appointment system) almost always never goes down (and if it does, IS fixes it IMMEDIATELY, compared to the everyday ridiculous time-consuming productivity-killing system failures at my new job), you get EIGHT hours of PTO PER pay period (compared to the 6.75 or whatever BS we get per pay period at my new job). And oh yeah, at least my former Children's employees can request time off with enough advance notice whether you have PTO to cover it or not. At my new place of employment, you absolutely cannot request time out without PTO, meaning that that lovely vacation you've been wanting to go on is going to have to wait until loooooong after you've been hired and/or you finally have enough PTO to do what you wanted, only to realize you can't take that time off because someone else has already requested the same time off and tough noogies, you have to stay at work and cancel whatever plans you have.

Another thing that has me realizing how good I had it as a CHMC employee is the patient contact. Now I have a job with no patient contact and I find myself missing the parents and children more than ever, more than I ever thought I would. What I wouldn't give to have the opportunity to soothe a frazzled mother and find something to entertain her children rather than talk to cranky generics all day as I do now.

I always took it for granted: the downtime that you have as an employee at Cincinnati Children's. During the day, you're busy, but you also have breaks too that your supervisor often encourages you to have. Breaks that are NECESSARY to avoid burn out. Breaks that I do NOT have at my new job. All that Facebooking, all that standing around and talking about whatever, having friendly chats with patients/families or looking at the news on the internet? Um, sorry, NONE of that exists at my new job. Just work, work, work, work, have a thirty minute lunch break, swallow your food, and go work yourself into exhaustion some more. My new place of employment is everything that Cincinnati Children's isn't. Uptight, chaotic, stressful, uncertain, impersonal. 

So if you happen to be employed at CHMC and feel frustrated, please keep it in your mind that it could be so much more worse. While I do not really miss Cincinnati itself, I deeply miss Cincinnati Children's, working there, the friends and families I mingled with on a daily basis. I was simply employed there for so long that it was like second nature to show up for work there everyday.  If you are looking for employment at CHMC, I urge you to go for it. The institution itself TRULY care about its employees and their well-being. Sometimes you don't realize these things until you leave. The grass is not greener on the other side sometimes.

I can't thank Cincinnati Children's enough for being a top-notch employer. Hats off to you, CCHMC. I love and miss you.

I was overly excited about working with Children's Hospital, it was my dream to work there and help make a difference. I worked in inpatient pharmacy and it was very rewarding. The longer I worked there I had applied for a position that was even more rewarding and challenging in which I always like a
challenge. I have great work ethics and enjoy teaching others what I've learned over the 20yrs I've practiced pharmacy. If you have a good idea, management totally shuts it down, we are constantly getting more and more work put on us but never rewarded. The first 2yrs was great, after that I questioned my own health, stressing out and feeling extremely fatigue after the day was over, like I just got done working my 2nd 16hr shift in a row. It saddens me that they dont appreciate hard work and make people that have no business being leads or upper management a position up the ladder only to fill the spot, whether they are qualified or not. Most of them with no qualifications, only in their field and barely an expert at that. It's my conclusion that you will be hired even if you have no leadership experience, have poor work ethics, not at all personable the positions that are by no means ready or have any experience to be climbing up the ladder. They will make anyone a lead or of higher position pharmacists and technicians even after they've had several bad reports that do not qualify them for that position.
Seems like all the good employees have been forced out due to their  (management) poor decisions. All because of how management treats their workers. I would give them advice as to how things should be different so that things move more smoothly and they never would listen to our advice and only take the advice of someone that does not do the job on a daily. They are by far the worst management I've worked for. It is a revolving door and now they are hiring temps to do our job because no one wants to stay and be treated unfairly. Temps...really, it's that bad. We are just another head replaceable and that's ok with them to just let anyone handle our patients medications. What has happened to our lives that everyone is replaceable, there is no appreciation anymore for hard workers. You can do the least there and still go up the ladder. Everyone that I've worked with and work well with has or is leaving.What a shame, I'm totally disappointed on how the hospital is ran, its definitely gone corporate and the poor nursing staff is just as bad.

There's something inherently exciting about a hospital dedicating an entire department to using data, analytics, and statistical models in order to guide hospital improvement work. I never grow tired of being able to say that I used data to help improve children's lives. There are also some amazing, hardworking clinical staff out there and it's a joy working with them.

BUT if you consider yourself to be creative, passionate, skilled, and innovative person, I would highly advise that you exhaust all other job opportunities before settling with this position. The tasks are mundane and repetitive, the management is inconsistent and hypocritical, and our entire business model is centered on looking as productive as possible while not actually improving anything long-term.

Be prepared to be thrown in headfirst with little to no guidance. Some get mentors, others do not. Our "standards" are only enforced if it is convenient for the manager. There are always glaring quality issues with projects I inherit. When this quality issue was brought up, my manager brushed it aside. I had several instances where customers told me that my manager has historically been a barrier to improvement. There is a real lack of accountability for management and don’t expect them to solve any concerns you have. Several coworkers have left the department in a matter of months.

Management is also always quick to push the blame onto others (especially other internal departments).  When I tried to advocate for better data quality and data access my manager, once again, brushed it aside and told me multiple times that “We used to have it a lot worse back in the day”.  THAT is the quality improvement mentality from leadership. Instead of constantly improving, employees are told to just be thankful that it’s not worse. In my eyes, a quality Improvement team should NEVER settle for less. But it turns out you do when you work in this department.

There is also A LOT of bureaucracy between my department and IT. I have seen a countless number of clinical staff members be neglected because their project got abandoned in the nebulous void that is IT bureaucracy.  

The department really needs to practice what it preaches.

You’ll do well if you keep your head down and do exactly what your manager says. Just don’t get invested in the mission. As soon as you do, you’ll see that we are so far behind in living up to it.

Since current CEO became in charge, Children’s has declined significantly.  There is no care for employees and no drive to be the best pediatric hospital...they are stuck celebrating being #3.  Oh boy!    All the leaders that made it a great place to work and innovative to get that 3rd place ranking, have left for other opportunities elsewhere.  Management is often used in local college business classes as examples as what not to do!  The hardest part of the job is dealing with inept people put in positions of leadership that don’t belong; they’re only there because they kiss up to their manager/doctors.  Example, my manager lacks proper leadership/managerial education (all she has is a simple secretarial associates).  My manager is so concerned with kissing up to doctors that he can’t even make a decision for the department, if she does make a decision he will waffle on that decision the next day. Because of this, your typical day is usually spent undoing the objectives of yesterday! with the new COO, we were supposed to be applying LEAN methodology, but in my area, we do things 3-5 times in different places, because the manager can’t trust basic technology.  The workplace culture is that of no accountability, though top leadership said they were working to change that (it’s been almost 10 yrs and no change).  They used to have great healthcare but that is declining in recent years.  Additionally, the salary might be good but remember that you will be hit up with various requests for “donations” on a monthly basis, and you will be judged on if you give or not...usually in review and everyday interactions.  They actually report out to your manager on if you have given. I have no problem giving, but I do resent being made to give.
Furthermore, they are good at hiding those with adverse opinions and will most likely try to have this taken down. So the truth isn’t out there. After working here and seeing how they are, I personally will send my donations to St Jude’s hospital rather than here.

I can't say anything about the hospital side of Cincinnati Children's but I know the research side well.  I would never recommend any talented young researcher to waste their time there.  Children's research is decades behind.  The faculty with their huge salaries are mostly talentless and unproductive, occasionally writing useless papers of zero value.  The amount of waste that goes on in this place is unbelievable.  When the money was plentiful they were all relatively harmless, but now the new administration is making it a little harder to get funding.  When you throw together a bunch of talentless people and make them compete for an ever shrinking pot of money, and it's not surprising that abuse becomes likely.  I know of at least two cases where supervisors basically stole the work of their talented research fellows, then fired those fellows without giving a second thought about their lives or careers.  By the way, in both cases the supervisors were male and the fellows were female, which gives this place another interesting dimension.  Speaking of gender issues, there are still whole departments without a single tenured female faculty member.   I think one fellow also experienced serious harassment on the part of her boss and tried to complain to HR but that didn't help her at all and may have even harmed her further.  Promotions for non-faculty are non-existent.  If you get hired here as anything but faculty you will never become faculty, no matter how talented you are.  in fact, talented people with good ideas are even less likely to get anywhere in this place as they threaten the status quo and make unproductive tenured faculty look bad.  Lots of good people have gotten frustrated and quit recently.  Oh, and here's a piece of information HR will "forget" to tell you when they hire you: if you leave before you work for this place for 3 years you get exactly zero of their famous pension plan.   So, advice to any talented researcher: avoid this place.

CCHMC has changed so much over the last decade. It used to be a great place to come, plant roots, and grow in your career. Now, opportunities to advance are rare and some people are doing the work of two. Healthcare is in huge transition due to ACA so some of the struggles that Children's faces (keeping costs in control, etc) are not unique. 

In my daily work, I had to worry about people in other departments complaining about me just doing my job (my role involved constant contact with other departments) - certain employees liked to complain just when they were asked a question. The person I reported to didn't have the discernment to separate valid complaints from these complainers, so this made me dread coming to work when I just wanted to do my job and help the families. 

The benefits like good health insurance and a reliable schedule were positive.

However, after being harassed by someone I reported to - and a lackluster response by those in charge who failed to see the roots of the problem - I decided that my career here was over.

Conflicting priorities, multiple layers of people in charge, multiple people doing a similar job and giving employees directions, multiple people giving direction (with conflicting instructions), initiatives being rolled out at last minute (adding things for employees to do - with little or no time to ask questions) - things like this made my department very unpleasant to work in. PTO policy in my department was also not flexible and there were restrictions on when our time could be used. 

Organization-wise, there is no sick time - vacation/holiday/sick time are all one bank, so if you get sick and call out, that is a demerit-type event. For infection control, I don't know why this policy has never been revamped given that sick employees should not be interacting with the children.

I can only recommend Children's as a place to receive care, not as a place for someone to build a career.

Even with nearly a decade of experience working as a teacher at the employee's childcare, my pay remained equal to someone who recently joined, despite receiving yearly raises. I only made it midway on the pay scale before deciding that it was my time to go. It would have taken me 17 years to reach max pay on my scale. The only way to receive raises is by the yearly performance review- in which you get the same copy paste review as everyone else. 

It is impossible to get a day off- they even try to give you an occurrence and make you work when you are subpoenaed to court with months of notice. They only allow three out of seventy employees off per day.  Impossible to make a doctor’s appointment- had to go through Hartford to be allowed to have 2 hours off to go to one even when the schedule allowed. 

We had zero budget for the classroom, meaning that in seven years, we only were able to order $200 worth of materials once.  Employees funded the classrooms. Working there felt like working for a poor struggling childcare instead of a part of Children’s Hospital. 

Managers were inconsistent and did not back up the teachers. The managers exhibited poor conflict management skills by skirting around the issue and unfairly targeting the wrong teachers that were asking for help. Employees were able to slack on their paperwork with no consequences. Teachers that wanted to work had zero time to plan. They had a ton of floaters, but were poorly managed and hung out in the break room.

There was zero room for growth- even within the hospital. It is a great stepping stone job but nowhere to stay long term. This job has the possibility to be great if different managers were in charge/employees were managed better. 


Always hit the door running, there was little time for down time always something to do or someone to help. A typical day at work would consist of fast thinking, adaptability, and a go with the flow attitude. There was never any "stone" schedule it would change with the wind as in any high paced department.

The knowledge attained through this facility is priceless, they are a state of the art medical center with lots of "toys" to play with. There was always something to learn or to adapt into a procedure. I can honestly say I did learn something new everyday.

Management was in transition a lot it seemed. CCHMC was looking for a good fit for the department and its needs. It was a long process however I do believe they found a good fit for the department and the staff.

I loved my co-workers we were very much a family, considering we saw each other more then we did our own families. We always had one another's backs if one needed help someone would step up and help out. The best part was very rarely you had to ask for help because the staff was in tune with one another.

I cannot really pin point any hardships about the job. Like any job there are ups and downs however you work through and past them. However the hardest part for me was the decision to leave and stay home with my children. Again I loved my job but at the time my children and my own family needed me more.

I can honestly say I LOVED my job. It brought me great job and satisfaction. I enjoyed the environment I worked in the people who I came in contact with and the facility.

I was hired on and I knew for the most part about some of the policies. It wasn't until I was there 2 months that I found out about their time off/PTO policies. They give you 24 days of PTO per year, this is at 0.0923 PTO earned per hour worked. That sounds wonderful...at first. Holidays are taken off the top out of your earned PTO, there is no separate Holiday bucket. I was hired around the holidays so this was a problem. I was in the negative for a while due to holidays. You do not get this all at once, it is earned as I said per hour worked. They have about 9 holidays per year. Once you start earning PTO again, if there are cancelled clinics, they make you use your PTO for those cancelled clinics. Yes you heard me. They make you use your PTO when a doctor wants to take time off. You can't choose to use it or not, they force you to use it to meet your FTE whether that be full time 40 hours at a 1.0. Say you don't have PTO because of holidays taking it or cancelled clinics and you need off due to a sickness or vacation, don't count on it. They will decline your vacation, and if you take off, give you an occurrence for your absence. You only get 5 occurrences per year before a write up. You can't just say I don't want to use my PTO for the cancelled clinic, they make you use it. By the time the year is over, you've worked everyday with no time off because you're afraid to take off or you may lose your job and you're exhausted. That's not much fun and not family oriented around the staff that's here day in and day out. If you like vacations and time off, look elsewhere!

I like this Hospital as a whole. I thought nearly all of the workers I encountered were very nice. I loved my supervisors. They were very approachable and accessible. The fault was the initial job description of their new program they are implanting that I was a part of. I did not know I was going to do very little sticking. I did not know I was going to see things with the nursing staff that I would be horrified seeing. Caring for our kids should, one should ALWAYS  have "best practice" from ALL STAFF. It is not merely human error, I saw things there one cannot unsee. Some RN's were absolutely amazing. I hate to make these generalization of all floors, cause our program was concerning a small fraction of the hospital. BUT, what I saw made me not want to continue in the job I was hired for. I DO NOT BLAME the supervisors. BUT I will blame some hierarchy at the top, especially those in charge of nursing practices. I have a heavy heart leaving this position. The compensation is great and so are the benefits, and I really liked those I worked with and have great respect for them. BUT, at the end of the day...it isn't all about money. In our field, you need to love where you work and feel proficient at your job; I cannot at Children's. Please consider all of this. Work at outpatient or Processing as a phleb here, unless you are prepared to be guinea pigs for something you may be sorry for later.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 33 salaries reported	$38.20 per hour
Behavioral specialist 30 salaries reported	$22.75 per hour
Research assistant 7 salaries reported	$54,886 per year
Senior research assistant 5 salaries reported	$51,615 per year
Clinical research coordinator 3 salaries reported	$59,667 per year

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