registered nurse

patient care technician

mental health technician

nursing assistant

physician

Hackensack Meridian Health

I was reached out to by a temp agency called Medix that the Access director had used in the past. I had never worked for a temp agency before so this was new to me. I was working two jobs when I was asked if the position at Carrier Clinic (Intake Specialist) was something I was interested in. I said well it depends, as Carrier was a much longer commute (40+ minutes with no traffic) compared to my 10 min commutes to my previous jobs. I asked if compensation would be increased and if so when that would be. My recruiter from Medix said she would get back to me after speaking to the director of Access. She did and stated I could expect a raise following good work performance, showing up on time, basically being a good employee. 

So I accepted the interview and accepted the job and gave my other positions two weeks notice, I started work on December 1st.

The director of Access was recently hired at that time, he had been director for about 6-8 months at that point and came from a medical background. There was some scattered training and tools given as references as to how to perform the job and what was expected of me. I made mistakes as did everyone that was recently hired before or after me. No big deal, was corrected and if I recall hadn't made the same mistake twice. However, because of the constant changes in policies and procedures, there was often times some or none of the employees in Access knew what or how we were doing certain things, if a procedure was updated, revised, or thrown out, This frustrated me for multiple reasons. One reason this is frustrating is because when asking for help I would get a wrong or outdated answer or no answer at all because no one wants to be involved in something that would get back to them as giving out wrong information which I understood after being there for a few weeks. 

I would be told something by a supervisor/director but then when I do it and a co-worker questions it and goes back to the supervisor or director of Access about it, it gets denies or back pedaled on what was said or done. Basically I learned that if it wasn't in writing first, don't do it exactly for that reason, 

My contract was due to expire in June, and a few weeks before that, I had followed up with HR and the director and applied for the full time position hoping to formally work for Carrier and start accumulating benefits and Paid time off ASAP. The director offered me a full time overnight position or I can remain a temp and be scheduled whenever needed to cover vacations or gaps in coverage. I reluctantly took the overnight position 11PM-7AM even though I was originally told to expect my shift to be 11AM-730PM. No a big deal for me as I wasn't in school or have family obligations and he did say that i would be able to transfer once something became available. I accepted the overnight.

As June 1st approached I submit everything that was asked of me to submit expecting to start June 1st. HR took forever setting up an appointment to meet with me and the director was supposed to call HR prior to June first and have a meeting and when I spoke with him on the phone he told me he would be in touch and call me back that day, I never got a call back and got an email response to my inquiry stating the HR person involved with the hiring would be back from vacation sometime int he second week of June. I got this response in the first week of June, slightly annoyed with my experience so far with Carrier but relieved they were moving on it. 

HR meeting, I have to re submit referrals that I had already pestered for recommendations to Medix. I notice that the pay was still the same plus the differential for the night shift that I had already been getting. I was annoyed because I spoke to a coworker that was hired, through Medix 2 months before me who was on a normal day shift that she had received a pay bump when becoming full time. I respectfully responded via email during overnight shift as I don't see the director or HR as my shift ends before they come in and rush hour traffic is hideous if I stayed. 

The only times the director called me was to ask if I was logged into the phone system as he tracks all of that from home or his own phone and apparently referrals were complaining they couldn't get through, And since I was the only one on the phones in a particularly high volume time period their were voicemail and calls waiting for hours. He almost never answered his phone when he was on call and insisted he be called for certain situations. 

With all of that said, the job itself wasn't bad or hard and the co-workers are great and nice and funny, but the management and HR was severely lacking in communication which is the reason I decided to resign in the end. The pay was the last straw. It's pretty bad to be new to a job and immediately hear office chatter regarding competence and disgruntled employees against management. 

Breaks were rare and awkward to take even though we were told by HR we get two 15 minute paid breaks and a 30min unpaid lunch/dinner

I was a Mental Health Technician (MHT) for about two years. I applied for the Adolescent Unit knowing very well what I was getting myself into; I’d heard horror stories about how the kids were horrible to work with. Most of those stories weren’t really true, a lot of the kids were incredible and I got a lot of satisfaction from truly helping the ones I could help. Some of them had their negative moments, but that’s to be expected. I ended up learning a lot about working with all kinds of teenagers, how to run therapeutic groups with them, and how to help them process through their situations individually. The pay, quite frankly, was not good for the risks we would sometimes take of being physically hurt at work. The PTO time was fantastic, but you had to work at least two holidays, which is expected and fair. 

The horror stories really came from dealing with the rest of the staff. Some other MHTs did genuinely want to help the kids, but so many others were there quite literally for the paycheck, and they’d make sure to be vocal about it. If there was an emergency, they would suddenly disappear, or sometimes, they would say or do things that would trigger the kids or escalate a situation. Management wasn’t very helpful, and as my time was ending, they became very strict on every MHT—as they should—but did not look into or refuse to fire the MHTs that had been frequently reported. 

The main reason was that we were always understaffed. This was so much more obvious during the weekends, when sometimes MHTs would be forced to forfeit their one hour lunch breaks to stay on the floor. Some nurses would be sympathetic and cooperate with the MHTs as best as possible, but others would stay out of it and would continue to take their one-hour long breaks while the MHTs had to go an entire shift, sometimes two, without eating, since we weren’t able to eat on the floor of the unit or else we’d get written up. This was kind of a feedback loop—nurses would blame the bad MHTs, and the MHTs would blame the bad nurses, and the MHTs and nurses that did their best to work together and do their jobs to keep the kids safe ended up overworked, overstressed, and finally, quitting. 

Upper management and administration did not help, and a lot of the policies that we were told that had to be followed by law to hold up ethics, were not followed. During my time there, we could not accept adolescent patients that had histories of arson, were diagnosed with eating disorders, or only had a main diagnosis of low-functioning autism, because the facility quite simply is not equipped to take care of these populations of patients. Despite this, administration continued to accept and send through kids with these very same diagnoses, and expected the unit staff to “do their best” until they were discharged. A lot of times, it would take them weeks to be discharged, because they either could not communicate well with the staff or were being triggered further into their eating disorder.

 The Adolescent Unit also takes any and every patient from the East Mountain Youth Lodge, as we’d figured out toward the end of my time, if they “didn’t want to deal with them anymore”. This caused a chain reaction of kids from EMYL wanting to come to the unit to be with their friends, to get breaks from school, etc. This took away places for kids from EMYL that needed the help of the adolescent unit as crisis management, and made the already sometimes dangerous environment of the unit (depending on acuity), more dangerous with young adult patients manipulating staff and getting exceptions to every rule since they “know the place already”. When EMYL decides they cannot go back, and they cannot go to the house of a guardian, they get stuck on the unit until one of the few residential houses IN THE STATE OF NJ has a bed open. We had a young adult patient from EMYL stay on the unit for almost 10 months because of this—a unit not equipped for long-term stay—in which they became violent out of boredom and physically assaulted several staff members, some who later quit. 

None of this is the fault of the kids—most are there to get help they need. It is the fault of the administration that continued to accept them into a place that is not suited for them for the sake of taking their parents’ money. It became very obvious that the goal of the unit was to fill beds and make cash for the hospital first, and help the patients second. The staff that wants to make a difference can and does, and then continues to try their best. But when it becomes obvious that there is no support from the higher ups, they rightfully leave. 

Art first I felt that 15 dollars was an appropriate salary for the job, but after working there for a few months this quickly dissipated. I became quickly burned out by a full-time schedule. I highly recommend that beginners start off Part-time. In my time there I was passionate about helping people, and my co-workers saw this. I felt like I could trust them with supporting a new MHT and showing me how to correct wrongs and how to improve at the job position. Instead, I found out the hard way that many of the older employees became, as it seemed to me, threatened by the tenacity of a new employee. I gave great activity sessions to the patients who desperately needed something to keep their minds off of their plights, only to find out later that another MHT who was used to giving the sessions everyone raved about and acted kind to my face went behind my back to my manager and told her things such as 'he's telling them he is giving them therapy'. If you want to work there long-term, just do what you're told and do not go out of your way for the patients too much. Do not trust any of the other co-workers, as kind as many may seem (especially the older ones), for before you know it they will stab you in the back. The main issue with this facility is that nobody speaks directly and addresses the issues at hand, doctors treat patients like pieces of meat and act as if they know what they're dealing with just by looking at a piece of paper about the patients (they're also burned out because there aren't enough doctors on the units), you will see patients get stuffed with anti-psychotics just to keep them quiet instead of addressing the real issues, and the MHT's are either too passionate that they burn out or care too little about the human beings there to make a difference. If you're willing to give this a chance to find your entry into the mental health field then this is the place, but I recommend to you that you keep any personal issues completely to yourself, do not share too much with your co-workers, and pick up your personal baggage again when you leave the doors of Carrier at the end of your shift. Some of the best units I worked on were the OAU and the APA, mainly because of the people there. The main units I would personally avoid are the ACU, and the GAU. This is mainly because both tend to stress out the patients more than helping them due to lack of support by the Doctors and MHT's there, as well as the unit environments. Most units are understaffed, especially the OAU, so always keep that in mind. 

Oh, and if you want your PTO, you better schedule it as soon as you can. Else it becomes almost impossible to use the time off that you have worked for.

Thank you for your time.

Mixed bag experience. The job itself is not bad as you're basically assigned a task whether its sweeping, mopping, cleaning the kitchen prep area or taking out the garbage. The time and a half bonus and free meal are also good bonuses and from my experience they are quite flexible when it comes to hours. The pros mainly came with some of the people you work with, they really make the shift and workplace as a whole great. Many were an absolute joy and privilege to work under or alongside with. Unfortunately, some of the people also make up a great con of the experience as well. 

Management plays favorites and the department is very cliquey. If you're in the clique, you get away with just about anything, treated nicely, and you get opportunities for more hours and may even advance to other positions. If you're not in the clique, be prepared to pick up for others' slack, micromanaged and picked on if you're not outright ignored. That's to say nothing of some of the other departments who try to act like your boss, talk down to you, bully and make a scene when you're collecting trays from patients. That's not even mentioning HR and payroll. Good luck dealing with them. 

Collecting meal trays is another con. Not for the task itself, as its all part of the job, but the amount of drama that comes with it. People working in other departments will bark orders or chew you out for things outside your control (like patients not getting their meals on time, wrong order), missing a room, or for the sake of starting something. The food service worker collects the trays, they are not waiters, housekeepers or the complaint department. The patients and their families are pretty much what you'd expect in a customer service type role, some friendly others not so much. 

All in all it has many highs and many lows, most of which could be solved by adopting and adhering to a more professional environment, starting of course with the management. Learn how to talk to and not down at other people, no matter your department or position.

I’ve worked here for a few years now as an RN and I can say with honesty that Carrier Clinic is just not the same as it was when I got hired. A lot of it is attributed to burnout because of very poor upper management, especially during this COVID era where everything is changing on a daily basis - sometimes nonsensically and often without input from clinical floor staff regarding practicality. Just to give an idea: the first 4-5 months of the pandemic, we were given cosmetician’s masks that clearly stated “NOT INDICATED FOR CLINICAL USE” on the box as our PPE, while they continued to fill us to capacity until an outbreak forced major changes.

Because of the poor upper management, this contributes to strife between nursing and MHT staff since we are all pretty much burnt out and many people just want to do the bare minimum of their job and get out. 

Back in the day, staff used to be able to make generous bonuses for working extra shifts and we were always adequately staffed for whatever situation. However, in recent years, the purse strings have been tightened and now we frequently are overworked and understaffed, often being told by nursing supervisors to “deal with it and make it work” - leading us to go rogue and have to call in our own staff and beg them to work (which we can no longer do) because our staffing seldom matches the extremely high acuity of the patients we take care of. On that note, Carrier used to have the ability to screen patients that could pose a potential danger to staff members or are not considered appropriate due to severe limitations impacting their ability to participate in treatment. Unfortunately since being taken over by HMH, it’s very much now an “open-door” policy and we aren’t provided adequate resources to take care of certain patients. 

I love what I do and I feel for my patients and want to always do right by them. They are the only real reason I stay because I know I can make a difference in their lives. The rest is just drama and frustration.

The good: 
-It’s a great place to learn to work in an interdisciplinary team. You will learn a lot about the roles of the various disciplines in a hospital and how they can work together to provide comprehensive care. 
- Health/dental/vision benefits are excellent as long as you go to HMH affiliates. Affordable as well. 
- Reasonable offering of PTO however, dependent on staffing, can be difficult to get approval for
- Good 401k plan
- Supportive supervisor in our unit. 

The Bad:
- Behavioral Health Social Work is obscenely underpaid compared to other facilities and other social work roles in NJ. Case management social work makes considerably more for no clear reason- same education, same credentials- and they aren’t all required the same holiday and weekend hours. Additionally, RNs with Bachelors degrees working in similar/comparable roles make substantially more. It’s almost like HMH doesn’t appreciate the education and skill set SW brings to the table- or are just woefully unaware. 
- Difficult to get supervision toward LCSW licensure depending on your role because they don’t incentivize LCSWs to provide it. HMH doesn’t recognize the different levels of licensure in terms of pay, only years licensed. Again, perhaps because of lack of awareness of the career path in SW
-Raises are minimal. No adequate cost of living increase for inflation. 
- Incentives for reaching unit goals are unclear and not explained to staff- making them conveniently impossible to achieve. 
- No time and 1/2 for overtime. No holiday differential/incentive and you are required to work 3 per year. No weekend pay differential- and you are expected to work every other full weekend. 
- Short staffing is common which leads to a few people carrying the weight of whole units and poses questions related to safety and quality of care  and adds to burn out
- It’s hard to take PTO because there’s no staff to cover
- You have to be out of work over 3 days to use earned sick leave- the first 3 days are your PTO. 

PARKING IS A NIGHTMARE. Get ready to be late or come in a hour early.

The management is awful. It is so disorganized and they never have your back. They bend the rules a lot. They enforce the policies heavily but if there is a complaint or issue, they will backtrack and you will look like the bad guy. Little to no accommodation to your needs or requests. Short staffed but it takes soooo long to be hired. I applied for this position for a year, multiple times. But they have been short staffed for a while. In the year I have been working, ITS BEEN SHORT STAFFED THE WHOLE TIME. I am not even medical staff. I am just the front desk. 

SENIORITY IS EVERYTHING. People who have been there for 10+ years will be treated like royalty, have anything they want. But I've been here a year now and full time however, part time people who came after me would have earlier shifts. I ask time and time again for earlier shifts since seniority is such a priority but no. 

NO WORK LIFE BALANCE. I had a different shift everyday, sometimes I would work late and work at 6am the next day. I asked for evenings off to attend weekly medical appointments but I was given the day off every week. Meaning, every other week, it will be a 6 day week. You will be burnt out. It is short staffed everywhere.  A lot of call outs and last minute overtime because everyone is tired.

I am a full time employee and was not given an ample amount of uniforms. So I would do laundry every 2 days, I was told to just rewear my clothes. I WORK IN A HOSPITAL SETTING. It is not sanitary. I would wear my own clothes and be in 100% of dress code but you will still be spoken to. 

Like most places, you will not get along with all of your coworkers. But hospital workers are a different kind of rude and petty.

You will be stretched thin.

A typical day began with listening to the report from the two previous shifts, followed by preparing to wake up patients and take their vital signs. The morning was spent taking the vital signs of 32 patients, assisting the nurses with paperwork, and acting as an assistant for the unit doctor. Immediately after vitals, I would lead a 30-40 minute meeting which discussed the days activities and gave those who were discharging a chance to share aftercare plans. The remainder of the day was spent running groups, answering the phone, assisting nurses and counselors with paperwork, getting patients into the doctor's office on the unit, and at times providing a high level of support for struggling patients. 

I learned how to be patient not only with clients but also with coworkers. It was a challenge to juggle the many roles my job called for, and at times it felt as though I was burning out. However, I learned how to balance work stress with self care, and how to separate what happens at work from the other areas of my life. 

The hardest part of my job was working with coworkers that were for the most part burnt out and overworked. These individuals had been working at the unit for decades and had lost a sense of compassion for clients as our unit was much like a revolving door. The management was weak during my tenure, though before I left there were many changes to the management and I believe that positive changes were in store. 

The most enjoyable part of my job was the times I spent talking with clients one on one. So many of them were hesitant to share, and I was always very honored when clients confided in me. Particularly, I felt very rewarded on the days in which clients would stop me after a group I lead and tell me how much they learned from what we discussed.

A typical day involved conducting crisis assessments in the Emergency Psychiatric Services (EPS) Unit while managing a high patient volume. Despite being hired for an afternoon shift, I was required to train on a completely different schedule without structured onboarding. Essential training, such as EPIC system access and safety protocols, was delayed, which made it challenging to perform effectively.

I learned how to navigate crisis intervention in a fast-paced hospital setting, but the experience was hindered by a lack of clinical supervision necessary for professional growth. Management communication was unclear, and expectations often shifted without proper guidance. Feedback was sometimes vague or punitive, making it difficult to improve performance.

The workplace culture varied, with some supportive colleagues, but overall, the environment felt high-pressure and unsupportive. The hardest part of the job was managing patient care without clear procedural guidance or proper support from leadership.

The most enjoyable part of the job was working directly with patients and collaborating with team members who were committed to quality mental health care.

A typical day at work entails the flexibility to set up the best work environment possible for your patients. Although the unit is busy with tests, MD rounds, open door policies, frequent phone calls while giving medications, and call bells going off; nurses have managed to create an environment where we can educate the patient on diagnosis, medications and course of action. Management understood the frequent phone call situation so they equipped each nurse and patient care technician with a phone to carry around so we did not have to leave the room to respond to queries by pharmacy, MD, secretary, family members, other departments, or telemetry monitor technician. JFK created a culture where patient satisfaction is the forefront of care and each nurse respects this building block. The patient safety was remedied with bed alarms and a NO PASS ZONE which makes every call and bed alarm everyone's responsibility, to limit the patient fall rate. The hardest part of the job is to discharge patients and admit patients at the same time but we do our best to maintain safety and timely fashion. The most enjoyable part of the job is definitely empowering the patient with education and watching the patient flourish with the information that was given.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 28 salaries reported	$48.65 per hour
Patient care technician 4 salaries reported	$18.73 per hour
Mental health technician 6 salaries reported	$20.00 per hour
Nursing assistant 8 salaries reported	$20.20 per hour
Physician 13 salaries reported	$120,846 per year

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