registered nurse

travel nurse

licensed practical nurse

registered nurse - medical / surgical

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Sentara

There are a lot of really nice, good people working  at Norfolk General's Core Lab. the parking is free and (for a medical center) fairly convenient. When the department has a party for someone birthday or departure / arrival, the food is usually really good. They do a really good job with the Halloween decorations.

There are many nice things I can say about my experience there. Sadly there are a huge number of negative things as well. The lab staff and leadership are nice, but are far too stressed out and stretched thin. (and criminally underpaid) The overall facility is shockingly shabby and poorly maintained. 

Pay is exceedingly poor, which they say they're working on, but likely this is just the higher ups trying to make the lab people be quiet. They try to make up for this in other ways but there's really not much you can do when the pay is not competitive and everyone is suffering from burnout constantly. 

The core laboratory suffers from a lack of good organization, leading to a really frustrating work experience. The lab leadership knows that it's an issue, and would like to help, but has absolutely no spare time to make needed improvements. As a result, organizational issues persist doggedly, confounding any attempts to improve productivity.

Adequate training under these conditions is difficult, and it shows. People do the best that they can, but in both the technical areas and the processing area there is a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to how the equipment operates, and as a result the whole operates at a much lower efficiency than what it is capable of. Undertrained, underqualified (not the employees fault FYI), underpaid and badly overworked employees understandably fall into a state of panic and frustration anytime something unexpected happens, which creates a scary working environment.

 Some of the team leads exhibit this behavior more than others, lashing out at employees sporadically, sometimes over things that don't really matter. This is (in my opinion) not really their fault, but is instead due to the highly unreasonable working conditions leading to burnout and accordingly poor conduct. The team leads deserve sympathy, but this pattern also can make them very hard to actually deal with day-to-day.

The third shift technical staff are pampered by the leadership here. Likely due to the high degree of difficulty finding people willing to work that shift, they can basically do whatever they want, so long as they show up and clock in and out. Many of them are in the habit of showing up to their assigned workstation at least a half hour late almost every day. They also habitually bully and harass coworkers that work on other shifts. Many of the third shift people are nice and perfectly reasonable, but it's a mixed bag. I suppose when you make someone unfire-able after a while their deeper personality comes out.

The response to feedback / complaints to leadership about the aforementioned unprofessional behavior has generally resulted in fairly swift and severe retaliation. This tends to come in the form of bogus complains to leadership. Sadly some of the employees have no compunction about filing dishonest complaints with leadership and more importantly HR about coworkers they don't like. This wastes a lot of time in general, and puts the people in the core lab's higher leadership roles into an impossible situation. Usually the targeted people just leave or may occasionally get terminated by HR, but the end result is a team of largely unfire-able, poorly performing, and extremely unprofessional Techs working on third shift. 

I don't envy the Core lab's supervisors, manager's etc. They have a very difficult job here, and none of this is the fault of the actual laboratory employees. If Sentara would pay competitive wages, hire adequate staff, and if HR was actually helpful this could be an outstanding place to work. Until something resembling this happens the lab people in Norfolk General's Core lab will likely continue to be miserable and few, and patient care will continue to suffer as a result. Change is needed here, but the problem is not with the individuals working in the lab, it's with the severe mismanagement and general cynical apathy evident in the actions and inactions of Sentara's HR and Administration. 

At Sentara you definitely had to work hard.  I found myself working 8 to 12 hours a day at the facilities, then I would come home and work for hours, just to keep up.  It seemed as if upper management would always find something more for you to do.  I another form to fill out, that often made no sense at all.  There was not a lot of team work.  Each department that had a part to do in the MDS was always behind and often caused the assessments to be late.  I complained at first about it, just like every other MDSC, but found it got me nowhere fast.  So, I just did their sections myself, and there were no complaints from the department heads.  I did ask that they complete the admission, annual, and significant changes so that they would know their patients.  PPS and Quarterlies I did their sections.  Now I am exaggerating a little, but I kid you not there were probably five different ways that the MDSC had to complete to notify the team of what assessments were due.  You would think that a PPS sheet for the skilled assessments and a monthly calendar for the LTC assessments, would have been all you needed. But different department heads needed different forms to be able to complete their MDS.  I felt like, I am doing five different forms for these departments, who complain that they cannot complete their sections on time because they don't know what is due.  It was always an endless battle between the department heads and MDS.  MDS was always to blame when being questioned over late assessments by the other department heads.  It literally came down to CC: any and every email sent out by MDS would also go to our manager and the department heads manager.  It did not help.  I can imagine that our manager was overwhelmed by the amount of emails sent.  Interviews were never completed by Social Services, which was reflected by the fact the no resident in any Sentara facility had depression.   Everyone scored 0, when pointed out the numbers on the form changed but still no one scored high enough to reflect signs of depression nor did they trigger a CAA.  MDS got together and met monthly with our manager to discuss upcoming events, education, a party, or maybe just an opportunity to let off some steam as we found ourselves complaining to the wind.  Each facility complained about the same things.  Every MDSC worked hard long hours, and most if not all were under high levels of stress to get all the work completed that was demanded of them.  Most MDSC also found themselves playing Clinical manager to the unit they worked for due to there being no Clinical manager or the clinical manager was off somewhere doing something.  I was definitely a difficult job.  It was fast paced with high levels of stress to get everything done, long long hours spent at the facility (we often joked about just living there), desperate cries for assistance from upper management to encourage their department head to do their sections of the MDS or complete interviews. We came in early to catch the night shift and left late often seeing the night shift, and this most of the time was just to complete forms for what seemed like no reason.  We had several different manager, but no one greater than our first Linda Looman.  She was awesome.  I feel like all I have done is talk bad about Sentara, but it was not all bad.  One of our many manager was able to take away our on call responsibility.  Because if we are on the cart who is doing the MDS.  It is a great place to learn about LTC and skilled services.  I definitely learned a lot while I was there.  I had two managers offer me leadership courses, but neither manager was able to make it happen.  Open opportunities for advancement.  If you did not like what you were doing, you could easily go somewhere else in another LTC/skilled facility or to the hospital, and there, there are so many different department you could change up anything you wanted.  So, that was nice.  Sentara helps pay for you to go back to school.  They match you up to 6% in you 403b account, which is also nice.  The people you work with and struggle with help with the stress of the daily hussle.

The department that I was in while I was working at Sentara was incredibly stressful. 
The main management was never around to help manage our department because they were busy running 3 other departments at the same time. Our lead tech was our acting "manager" and she was spread incredibly thin as well, trying to be a tech, a lead, and everything else in between. She was always the first one in and the last one to leave.
I, too, felt the pressure of being run so thin. I would do a lot of the patients that needed to be done in the department, and then I would get cut as soon as the rush of the morning died down. I was hired as full time and was sometimes lucky to get 30 hours in a week. I had to FIGHT for my hours, as did everyone else on the team. It cause so much friction because we always had to huddle and basically kick someone out for the day. We all eneded up hating each other for it because no one wanted to go home. We all had bills to pay.
When I would ask to be cross trained, or advanced, they would always "try" but they could never afford to pull me off the floor to cross train me because they needed the manpower in the morning, an then when it wasn't busy the department couldn't afford it.
I would come home many nights crying from stress and the very poor morale my team had. We weren't a team at all. We all had to watch out for ourselves.
Mistakes were forbidden here. You always felt like if you made a mistake you were going to lose your job. Heaven forbid you stamp the wrong patients name on images and catch it before it gets sent to the doctor. You still had to have your manager split images, and she had to file a report on you, thus resulting in probation. Theres a 3 strike you're out policy. It was terrifying.
As for pay, I only worked at this one job while in VA so I don't have much to compare it to. I will say that we got bonuses almost every year. And my pay did go up every year. But I will also say that my pay jumped over $10 from moving from the East coast to the West coast. I think the West coast does pay more, but Im also not sure if I was being under-paid at Sentara? No clue. 
The retirement plan was great though! They matched whatever you put in. HUGE plus for me.
Oh! They took all of our chairs so we couldn't sit down for the entire 8 hours. Unless it was for our 30 minute lunch.

Sentara is a WONDERFUL place for patients. Sentara holds its employees up to very high standards to produce quality care, which is respectable. But when you treat your employees with either low pay, or cut their hours back to save the hospital money...you end up very disgruntled employees. I really did not understand the magnitude of the mistreatment until I came to my new job. My quality of life is so much better now.

As a credentialing specialist on the initials team you will be responsible for lots of things that are not in your control and you will not be given help. It's a sink or swim environment where everyone is sinking. All new rules will overwhelmingly make your job harder while relieving someone up the chain of something. 

You will need to verify affiliations, work history, licenses, boards..etc. Files are blindly assigned without consideration of a person's current workload or ability to handle the size. There is a list of analysts and files are assigned in the order on the list. You are automatically also assigned any file you previously had. This means you can get lucky enough to receive harder files than others and a higher amount if you were there longer than others. You will be assessed on how long it takes you to finish a file, but you will also be given important files to start immediately which creates a conflict in the time you turn around your other files. They will then turn around and ask why it took you so long which is gaslighting at it's finest. 

Getting or having a CPCS or CPMSM is a waste of time and you will not find any financial support from management to continue membership or pursue any education. This department expects you to do as you are told and to shut up. The company scrapped the pension so there is no reason to stay long term. 

Everyone doing credentialing including the supervisor is in school pursuing options to get out of there. The working environment is very hostile due to the director and you will be able to feel the tension immediately during your first team meeting, which is a huge vent session. You have no control over anything and you will be blamed for anything upper management can get away with blaming you for. 

They tell you to CYA from the clients by documenting things but you need to CYA from management as well because they are snakes. If you have children don't expect any leniency. Supervisor made veiled threats regarding meeting production before remote workwas available due to covid, so they don't trust you. There no advancement so bargain for a high salary. 

Also there are no paid holidays and you will have to use PTO for everything. Most people are bankrupt after new years. If you get sick for a day and you have less than 40 hours of sick time you will be expected to use your Paid time off for the first day, and if you are sick the next day you can use your sick time. If you have no PTO and you want to take off they will let you work on the weekend, work extra hours to make it up, or just not get paid.

A Typical day started at 4 am calling and checking on the unit  for any issues or change in conditions with any resident, or any concerns. 
0700 am validation of staffing on the unit, review of the 24 hr report and the morning huddle with the staff. This consisted of report, change in condition with any resident, appointments and new admissions. Any incident that occurred was discussed and the intervention as well as Md  notified and the RP.
0745 Nurse Registry placed on the board. Assignments completed for nurses and Aides.
0800- reviewed new admissions  for proper assessments completed, incidents assessed for proper documentation and notification along with care planning.
815 am rounded on residents  with change in conditions

0830   preparation for the morning meeting
0831 am meeting started, MUDD meeting followed
0931 Discharges discussed and GG's to be carried out.
1000 am rounding o the floor and small huddle with nursing staff based on the morning meeting for more follow up and new admissions coming. 
1015 Rooms validated for admissions and discharges completed.
11am rounding and checking on staff and residents.
1130 am passing trays and feeding residents
1230 Assist with Restorative, Wound Care and documentation
1300 Check on Aide documentation.
1400 follow up from homework sheet given to nurses and aides
1500 Taking report on new residents from the hospital
1510 end of Day Meeting with Department Heads  for closure of open  business.
1520 Staff validation  and assignments in place
1600 New orders validated and families called
1700 Weights entered  in computer system, skin assessments reviewed, quarterly assessments reviewed.
1800 Night assignment made with duties assigned. Showers validated for 3-11 shift.

Hardest part is decrease in nurses  and getting them hired based on slow process.

The most enjoyable is seeing results of your team working together and learning and providing excellence of care to the residents and customer service to  them, families and vendors  and to each other.

Decrease in management on the floor but staff  adapted to only seeing the manager.

A typical day of work included: greeting patients and visitors, checking in, registering, admitting, transfering and discharging patients as instructed. Patients that arrived for testing and/or surgeries would be asked to collect any copayments or deductibles and I would process the payment. It was our daily goal to provide excellent customer service to all patients and visitors that entered the hospital. I was responsible for registering and/or admitting patients and verifying all personal information and insurance coverage. After registration or admission was completed I would call either the department in which they were going to or medical transport to tell them the patient is ready and in the waiting room. We were expected to multi-task by also answering the telephone and individual pagers.
I absolutely loved my job! I enjoyed the daily personal contact with the patients and getting to know them. I consider myself a very personable person and if there is anything I can do to make somebody's day a little bit better it makes me happy. I worked in a department with all women and one man. There was quite a bit of drama between the employees, usually the same few that just did not get along and would sometimes bicker in front of patients. I find myself an easy going person and easy to get along with. I am always smiling at work and found it easy to get along with all of my co-workers. My boss would tell me I was a great team-player. I learned how to deal with some difficult people while working at the hospital. I've had to deal with very angry and upset patients who might be in severe pain and impatient. I've developed skills to deal with these more difficult patients; to empathize with them, apologize and try to accommodate them to the best of my ability.

As a cardiac surgical tech, the job is extremely demanding of one’s time and schedule (to be expected). I went in with 5 years of Main OR experience (Neuro, ENT, Vascular, General, and OMFS). They agreed to hire and train me due to my understanding of Vascular surgeries. I got trained up by them. They functioned like a well oiled machine. All cases flowed beautifully. The standard in comparison to the Main OR is just different, but to be fair they do the same cases over and over and over with the same surgeons and very little change in staff. Everyone knows each other really well, therefore it’s very tight knit. Everyone is going through the tough schedule together so they watch out for each other. It took a while to start feeling as part of the team. Even towards the end of my time there I didn’t feel I fully clicked but I think it was mainly due to an age gap. The manager was really kind and respectful of my schedule and time. I was going to school full time while working there and they did their best to accommodate. I unfortunately had to leave the job to solely focus on school. But I miss the job every day. It did suck to always be sleeping with one eye open waiting for a call. Additionally, the pay was low. To be fair they were paying me to get trained. But thanks to that experience I not only upped my game as a surgical tech but also I became extremely marketable as a surgical tech outside of Main OR. I am beyond glad to have worked there and to have learned from each and every one of those team members. They each taught me something valuable. If I could go to school full time and work there full time I absolutely would. I have considered going back but I feel it is my time to focus on newer things. 

I worked at Virginia Beach PACE from 2013 to 2014. Professional staff is pressed to their limits without adequate compensation. Turn over among professional staff is extremely high. At this facility, under-staffing and not replacing employees when they leave is routine. Instead, they pass double duty to remaining employees. Salary positioned employees routinely worked a minimum of 50 to 60 hours per week due to inadequate staffing.  Voiced concerns were meant by management as 'that's the meaning of working salary.' In other words-We own you. Professional staff were pulled to the day room due to inadequate staff-per-patient ratio when officials visited. Management attempted to address cost and over crowding by cutting patient services which lead to strong push back from the clients. Instead of addressing this directly with the patients, management passed this task off to the social work dept. who were left facing the resistance. During my employment, the Social Work department turned over completely twice with no remaining employees. The housekeeping department was dropped from two employees to one.  The visiting nurse department lost one of two nurses and the new nurse left. The recreation department lost two directors.  Ethical practices became a serious issue when management ordered staff to violate the code of ethics. This is not a company that I would recommend to anyone. As a result of my professional  experience with this program and family members' personal experience with Sentara, I avoid all contact with Sentara and go out of my way to seek medical care at Bon Secours facilities.

Typical work day as a secretary is filled with accommodating patient phone calls and needs, making appointment and fulfilling my providers requests on demand.
I've learned, organization, great customer/patient relations, consistency and a great knowledge of the medical office field.
Management in my office is by fare the best I've EVER had the privilege to work under. Shes not what some would call a title toting desk hugging troll. Shes a genuine , kind , hard working, authentic and inspiring leader.
My coworkers are excellent, hard working and extremely smart. its truly a team.
The hardest part of my job is the volume, the provider i work for has a rather large patient population, she/he is an amazing doctor and amazing doctors tend to due things differently. She/He is very loved and sought after and therefor the demand can be overwhelming some days.
Also the volume of the company's new initiatives and requirements monthly is ever looming and a bit stressful. But it is all so vary valuable to the success of the company and the excellence it brings to health care.
The most enjoyably part of my job is the patients , getting to see them through the challenges and take care of their needs. Their gratefulness and relationship with the practice is endearing and lovely to experience .
Enjoyable also, and goes with out saying , is the amazing benefits and consistency in which the company delivers PAL, SICK and Holiday hour accumulations that are much appreciated and beneficial to personal health and piece of mind.

Worse job ever ! Hospital in ghetto with the most ungrateful patients ever. Managers spy and eaves drop on you all of the time , they love to write you up while rewinding what you did on the camera that is on you 24/7. No privacy. No lunch or breaks. Not even to go to the bathroom. Very short staffed. Currently have the radiology film room employees to help out. Doing what? Heck if I know because they can't start IV, scan, answer phones or research implants. Call is ridiculous. Get called in for diabetic toes, back pain of 10 years , and bicep tendon tears, and fingers. Weekends you can end up working 16 hours with no break or lunch and the holidays are the worse. They have employee appreciation where hospital cooks nice meal etc but if you work in MRI you are lucky if you get enough time to make a mad dash to get it, but you can forget about eating it. You better pack nuts and raisins in your pockets because that is the only way you are going to eat. 
    There is no work / life balance in MRI at Norfolk general so I don't know why the hospital advertises that. Not one manager or team leader have any experience in MRI and they make the most stupid decisions. I was even told by one of the managers that they do not care that any of the techs have sleep or a life , if you don't like it you can leave. The open scanner is the worse magnet ever. Working there was the worse experience of my life and I'm so glad that prison sentence is over. I would rather be working in a zoo cleaning up hippo lard all day then work here again.  
   The only reason there may be job security there is because no one wants to work there so there is always an opening in MRI.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 241 salaries reported	$41.76 per hour
Travel nurse 122 salaries reported	$69.14 per hour
Licensed practical nurse 79 salaries reported	$28.63 per hour
Registered nurse - medical / surgical 80 salaries reported	$63.19 per hour
Registered nurse - emergency room 63 salaries reported	$65.70 per hour

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