registered nurse

business development representative

billing specialist

social worker

licensed practical nurse

East Tennessee Behavioral Health

What is the best part of working at the company?
Building relationships with coworkers and rapport with patients

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Safety: Zero safety measures for staff
Management: Management claims to work on the units but run away when problems occur. Do not listen to concerns from staff. Keeps employees that danger patients. 
Staffing: Not adequate staffing per unit. The ratio of patients to techs is too high. Some nurses will help, most won’t. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The work environment is very stressful and management will harass you about little things like a piece of paper on the floor. While, they allow other staff to become very personal with patients, bring contraband on the floor, and let patients climb walls to get out of the building. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
I walk onto the floor, get a tablet, day shift will give a brief report about what happened during the day. Most of the time they say good efing luck and dump the patients on you. You may get switched around the units because certain techs either refuse to work certain units or they are not allowed to be on  the unit. You will be berated by patients which partially comes with the territory of behavioral health, but it doesn’t help when staff do not follow the rules of the hospital so you can’t enforce any policy on patients. Example: Patients are not allowed to share clothing (This was blatantly stated at my orientation) Specifically nursing staff on the Adolescent unit will encourage them to trade clothing.  The problem arises when a patient wants their clothing back and the other patient will not let them have it. This is also a risk of sh to put it lightly.

Behavioral health work is incredibly meaningful, and the patients are without question the best part of this job. Helping people through crisis, seeing progress, and making a difference on someone’s hardest days is what makes the work worthwhile.

That said, this is an extremely demanding environment that requires strong leadership, teamwork, and consistent staff support, and that has been one of the biggest disappointments. A typical day can involve managing crises, safety concerns, de-escalation, heavy emotional demands, and constant unpredictability, yet support from leadership often feels disconnected from the reality of frontline care.

The hardest part of the job has not been the patients, it has been navigating workplace culture, inconsistent communication, and feeling like staff concerns are not always genuinely heard or addressed. High expectations are placed on direct care staff, but support and recognition do not always match those expectations.

I’ve learned a lot professionally and personally working in psychiatric care, especially in resilience, crisis intervention, and communication but retention and morale would improve significantly if leadership focused more on supporting the people doing the work every day.

Most enjoyable part: the patients and the coworkers who truly support each other.

Hardest part: everything around the job that makes an already difficult role harder than it needs to be.

I’m surprised to see some people say the pay is great in the reviews because for BHA’s it’s on the lower side for the area. 
Terrible work culture, I felt belittled by every person I worked with because I had minimal training and knowledge of what I was walking into.  Micromanaged constantly. Management was more worried about numbers on a screen than adequate staffing, training or advocacy for employees. Even coming from a background with plenty of experience in this position the 2 week long training I received was not sufficient in giving me the information I needed to succeed in the position. Every floor I worked on and every person I worked with had a different description of what our job rolls entailed. Making it very hard to decipher what my roll actually was and what I needed to be doing. 
Very few coworkers treated me with with any respect acting like I was burden from asking questions and trying to figure out what in the world was going on and what I was supposed to be doing. 
Lastly I will add that on top of the work culture being horrendous, you received very little breaks for a 12 hour shift. 2-15 minute breaks and one 30 minute break for lunch in 12 hours. Which would be fine except rarely do you get to take those breaks and often complained about when you do.  I would not recommend this job to my worst enemy. 

East Tennessee Behavioral Health is nothing that it claims to be. 

From being constantly understaffed, placing staff members in dangerous situations, not listening to suggestions and creating a favoritism based work environment with no support from management or HR, this place is a great place to work if you want to question your work ethic, integrity, and intelligence.  

This environment will belittle you, not listen to you and place you in situations you are not trained for. 

This environment will place you in danger and higher ups will not support you if you are hurt or feel threatened. The safety measures in place are not adequate for a facility that takes on acute patients. 

There is an extremely high turn over rate for a reason. 

I worked here for 10 months, I never received correct training, they constantly changed their minds on what my job description truly was, they would constantly switch up was I was supposed to be doing and what I wasn’t. I would never recommend working here to a friend, or family member. I watched hard working staff get belittled, watched on the cameras by higher ups, and dismissed with no hesitation. 

I come in not having a clue what type of work load I will have. I can have up to 12 acutely ill psych pts and one other nurse with the same number. I can be working admissions having up to 6 admissions and they expect them done in 2 hr windows per pt (do that math) I could be acting house supervisor because currently they are down 3/4 nurse supervisors 🚩 on its own. The turnover is unreal with good reason. The HR department is an absolutely joke. They are so desperate for workers but unwillingly to pay them what they deserve. The place has been open a couple years with maybe one hand worth of people that's been there the whole time. 

I came from a background in nonprofit and this job is SO much better for me than my previous ones. The pay is FAR better than what I was used to, same with work/life balance, benefits and perks. 
Very very happy I was able to slightly shift careers into the hospital setting for these reasons. The hospital culture can be grating and stressful but it's still nowhere near as stressful as a number of the social agencies in town. 
The patients are mostly fine. It's a psych hospital. Most folks are going through the worst days of their lives. It's much more chill than it's made out to be. 
I really like most of the leadership. Lots of incredible, kind nurses and techs as well. 
Lots of turnover and not a ton of excellent training opportunities but they are working on that. 


What is the best part of working at the company?
Coworkers and Shift differential.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Inadequate staffing for patient acuity. High nurse to patient ratio. Nurse manager does not advocate for nurses. Micromanaging. High turn over rate. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
High stress work environment. Management is not receptive to suggestions. Facility leadership seems disinterested in staff retention over all. Using many contract and agency workers.
Constant training of new staff.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Consistently Busy! Excessive workload with minimal staff. Multiple admits. Little time to actually speak with your patients. Struggle to get everything required done during the shift.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The clients. You go into a job like this because you want to help people at their lowest. I loved working with the clients

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The culture between employees. Sometimes there wouldn’t be enough employees so you could end up sitting in a chair for your entire 12 hour shift watching a client sleep 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
When you first start, in orientation, this seems like the absolute best place to be. It’s far from the truth unfortunately 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
It varies but it’s usually decently calm

The disconnect between what administration expects and what is actually possible is profound.  This appears to be a very profit-driven facility, expecting incredible results on skeleton staff.  Quality care is never put first, quantity of patients is paramount. Negative attitudes are pervasive and rightly so- because there is no sense of support and community.  It’s doubtful administrators know what support and community are- a scary thought for a large MENTAL HEALTH provider.

Night shift is kind of a nightmare. You hear different things from admin vs coworkers about what policies are/what you should be doing on shift. Patient safety concerns are sometimes shrugged off. Always understaffed. Poor/insufficient communication from higher-ups, especially on night shift. General lack of consideration for nightshift workers in general. I liked my fellow coworkers but the hospital itself is little bit of a disaster. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 3 salaries reported	$40.67 per hour
Business development representative 1 salary reported	$55,000 per year
Billing specialist 1 salary reported	$16.54 per hour
Social worker 1 salary reported	$63,400 per year
Licensed practical nurse 1 salary reported	$22.50 per hour

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