registered nurse

registered nurse - medical / surgical

physical therapist

respiratory therapist

nursing assistant

Salem Health

Professionalism- high. Expectations to do more with less time- done. Money for continuing ed- done. Mentorship- done. Exposure  to inpt/ acute/ sub-acute and psych.-done. Some buildings well planned and great environments for patients and families and staff. Rehab staff on salary-yep. Rate of abuse of this-high. As long as the job gets done the exec. do not care how much time and effort someone puts in and then yes you can be thrown away like a dirty tissue. But as long as you, yourself monitor boundaries, feel confident standing up to management then you are golden. 

Generally good leadership trying to make a hospital viable in tough conditions- done.  Lean business model-great. Executives that do Lean model in practice-few. Front-line workers and lower leadership expected to abide by Lean-all.

This makes a divide where wasted time, money, effort goes and work culture becomes less about lifting up the employees so they can lift patients and more about churning out patients as fast as possible while still maintaining the minimum standards. I have worked many places. And I am still torn about what to think about Salem Health. Parts of it, help me to think it one of my favorite places I have work. And other parts make me want to leave healthcare all together. Example, it is becoming a victim of the current age of healthcare, where money and programs are pursued at all costs, instead of it being about patient care. I get it. Have to keep the lights on. But it is like a wound that gets getting re-injured. It's a challenge. There are wonderful days and severely exhausting days. So I guess an adventure. Just remember, you will need to control how much you giver or it will take all. 

As a unit clerk my typical day would entail; answering the multi-line phone and patients call lights, welcome and assist visitors, make new patient charts, monitor telemetry, checking Doctor orders and making sure everything is ordered properly to fulfill those orders, and make sure unit supplies are stocked.  
I have learned so much through this job.  I was able to take the telemetry class and learned about the hearts rhythms.  I am more knowledgeable with medical terminology and equipment.  I have learned how to interact and teach different learning and thinking styles, plus communication skill for patients, families, and co-workers of different ethnicities.  
My two direct managers are amazing.  They are always around to talk to about work or personal issues.  They are truly here for not only work, but to make sure their staff is satisfied and happy.  They work hard to make sure that both patient satisfaction and nurse satisfaction are high.  
Our night shift crew has been a pretty tight crew.  We are very team oriented, love to help one another out when needed.  We also celebrate everyone’s birthday with a potluck, sometimes we will go out to dinner, camping, or on vacations together.  
I believe the hardest part of my job is the fact that it hurts my body to much.  I injured my back in 2011 at work and the pain got better for a while, but now it is back and not stopping.  Doing patient care is really hard on my back and I really want to find a job that is still in the medical field, but with patients or customers that can overall take care of themselves.  
The most enjoyable part of my job is helping the patients.  I understand to know what it is like to be a patient in the hospital and need that extra support to do everyday activities.  I like knowing that I am here to help someone when they are their most vulnerable.

1000% agree with the harsh but accurate assessments of supply chain. My time in supply chain was not a good experience for many reasons. The first thing that made things very difficult was my manager. It felt like she was never on our side, and consistently talked behind our backs to others.  When the work became clearly unsustainable, we were put down instead of given help.  When brought up, her attitude suggested we were not working hard enough. Ideas for improvements were not welcomed, or challenged to the point that you had to give it up knowing if you continued she would just make your life miserable.  She demanded 100% control over everything, including petty things like office desk placements or lighting. She couldn’t even allow for us to be happy in our office.  On top of all that,  the negative gossip and sharing of personal information to others was the norm, creating a very uneasy and toxic atmosphere. As the ring leader, my manager was not shy to talk about other managers, other directors, her own staff, and myself in extremely unprofessional ways. The amount of hate I personally saw towards others that was on display was something I had never seen from a manager before. The level of vindictiveness  was astounding, and I can say I would never work under the current leadership again. I am not alone in that view and the sad part about all this  is it’s not a secret within the hospital.  It’s true that many other own staff have left and once out of that atmosphere, thrive.  

Worked three weekend night 12 hour shifts. I stayed busy with a 54 bed ER and also the birth center. I was able to manage most nights, except for one memorable night when I had to call in another tech.

I loved the fact that I was free to ask questions of other ultrasound techs and learn how to improve my images. We had access to patient history and labs to follow up on our patient care. This helps us to learn and do better.

Our supervisor would frequently make time to go over cases with me and this showed she cared to help me do better and learn. I really appreciated her time.

Salem Hospital was also in the middle of updating and changing to a new hospital. We always had parking and it was free.

My coworkers had an astounding amount of skill and they were quite willing to help and teach. We excelled in finding appendix and they taught me the skills I needed to hunt appendixes. One of our techs was a pro at working with children. The children cried very little while she worked with them.

I loved my 12 hour shifts. They always went fast. The hardest part of the job was my days off; I always felt sick and never adjusted to night shift.

We were fortunate to have a large number of radiologists that read ultrasound. This means that the patients had excellent care and dependable reports.

When I first started working for this company, I was in love with the culture and the fact that the hospital system cared so much for the staff's safety. It was very different from where I came from in Idaho. Sadly, since the beginning of this year, I have noticed a solid downward trend. This hospital has a lot of employees who have stuck with them for 10+ years - who are now hitting a breaking point. As employees leave/retire, the hospital doesn't allow management to replace those positions but still pressures all providers to increase capacity. I work in a clinic with 6+ providers, and I am the ONLY clinical person onsite, besides one other person, who is our MOA/Referral Coordinator/Surgery Scheduler. Each patient and employee is a number to directors and higher; if they could replace us with software or a robot, they would, because then burnout/overtime wouldn't be a factor. It doesn't matter if the MD/APPs work in clinics or surgeries - they are expected to work so many hours yet still perform at the highest level of capacity without little to no training on how to use the EMR. I don't know how much longer I can handle working for the SHMG, as the hospital/inpatient side doesn't seem to be like this. Join this team if you care; be prepared to have to be highly medicated and require an outlet for all the stress/pressure placed on you daily. 

It is a stressful position to work. The loud noise in the room makes it hard to hear.  We worked a lot of the time short handed.
   
We did have potlucks which were fun. Interaction with co-workers was enjoyable for the most part.  We helped each other with questions and were supportive. 
  
A typical day can not be described as each day was different.  Some were slower paced and others were very busy and stressful.  We were not allowed to make any kind of mistake. 

The most enjoyable to me was the interaction with the doctors and nurses.  They were always very friendly and patient when needed.  Also the calls from patients or patients families.  Being able to help direct them to the right place was very important. Just helping was very important and hearing the caller become less stressed was the most important.  At times we had to deal with upset and verbally unacceptable patients or families.  We did our best to calm them down and get them to the right person to help them.  Most of the time we are able to do this and are  thanked at the end of the call.  We are trained to use compassion and understanding.  

The benefits are very good.  We have dental, medical, prescription, counseling, vacation and sick leave. On birthdays and work anniversaries we are given extra hours for vacation and sick time.  After being in the position a certain number of years we are given a gift card in the amount pertaining to the years of employment.

This is a place that thinks that they can reinvent the wheel and will exhaust patient care resources to do so. On top of the massive amount of callouts due to the culture of work your good ones harder now they will remove others to make an attempt to reinvent the wheel of it will be a hit on your evaluation.
The management is a joke as this is a culture of "make sure I have someone to blame". Don't worry about fixing the issues as long as management has someone to blame and that is on the rare occasion that management is not "working" remote. The remote piece is quiet comical as this just seems to be a way for management to not have to work the 40 hour work week but it is expected for staff to put in more than 40 typically.
If you chose this place as a place of employment the pay is decent but they are paying you to treat you horribly. They will continually hold your job in front of you like the preferable carrot and make you take on more takes of they will get rid of you knowing that no one wants to drive to Portland. 
If you have been in healthcare long enough to hear horror stories about hospitals that do most things wrong, have terrible leadership and just in general feels like they have no clue what they are doing on daily basis this is the hospital that you have heard those stories about.

No loyality for long term employees and they are terminating ADN RN's for any minor misstep! They are trying to save money and getting rid of "top of the ladder" RN's with ADN degrees because they have been deemed worthless now and will only hire RN's with a bachelor degree. ADN RN's dull their "Magnet" status ranking so watch out nurse's! Look at all the job openings at their facility, there are a lot! They are going to shoot themselves in the foot because there are far more ADN's then Bach RN's and they will be understaffed and lack of experience will lead to patient compliants and then the community will start griping about them like they did in the 90's! Guess who turned around their bad reputation, the NURSE'S did because we all had 15,20,25 years of experience and all the patients left having had a wonderful hospitalization. It will take a long time to build it back up but right now all they can think about is saving money!
ADN'swatch out because they will fire you in a heartbeat!
Patients would much rather have an ADN RN with 20 years of experience over a Bachalor degree new grad RN with no experience any day. Most of your nurse's skills are learned on the job over the years and you do not learn the most important skills in a classroom.
New nurse's are green, no experiences to fall back on. They have not developed any instincts or confidence to know weather they are giving the best nursing care!(they won't be!).

Working in supply chain has not been the best experience by any means. I would not recommended working here under the current leadership. The department is extremely understaffed.  It's impossible to keep up with all the phone calls, emails, and orders and the manager blames us for not being able to keep up.  When we try to voice concerns we are shut down or outcast.   We had a supervisor that left and was very well liked and understood the issues because of the toxic environment.       Other departments and staff express frustration with our manager and yet Salem Health doesn't seem to care, leaving us in the middle of petty fights our manager wages with everyone.    Our director who is rarely seen just repeats the same leadership catchphrases whenever he is magically around but nothing changes.  The culture is pretty bad as well and its always been a very tense and uneasy department.  Staff are not valued in supply chain and there is a lot of disrespect and making fun of other departments that goes on that seems to just be the accepted behavior.  No manager in a leadership position should make fun of other staff, mock other managers, and chase off good people in the department. Unfortunately, that is the reality  and it really makes for a horrible place to work.  


 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Very experienced and caring staff, including IT. You can gain a lot of knowledge from career employees. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Politics. Under appreciation of very well meaning, knowledgeable employees, which leads to low morale. Upper management putting in "lean" processes that were simply another layer of paperwork/comfort to them without any interest in understanding the actual work. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Varies widely by team. I loved my team, but we had bosses that trusted us and kept each other in check as well as cared for each other. The manager of each team sets the standard and trust level. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Varied, which was great. Too many pointless meetings, but daily team meetings that were incredibly valuable when led by team members and not management. Self directed for the most part, which allowed me to execute. That being said, management loved me and have me latitude. I had highly competent coworkers who were routinely reigned in because of a lack of trust, then criticized for their lack of initiative. I advocated for them, but it was clear they'd need to leave Salem Health to be fully appreciated. That killed me.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 6 salaries reported	$55.50 per hour
Registered nurse - medical / surgical 4 salaries reported	$56.00 per hour
Physical therapist 5 salaries reported	$45.30 per hour
Respiratory therapist 4 salaries reported	$51.28 per hour
Nursing assistant 3 salaries reported	$21.33 per hour

Working at Salem Health: Company Overview and Reviews

Salem Health

Salem Health Ratings

Popular jobs at Salem Health

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected