registered nurse

radiologic technologist

ct technologist

patient assistant

medical assistant

The University of Kansas Health System

A typical day at work is interacting with patients & co-workers.  

Taking care of patients.  I provide care to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual care needs of patients and families dealing with advanced-stage illnesses.

Responsibilities consist of but are not limited to collecting data (i.e. VS, weights, I&O) for initial and ongoing assessment of each patient as delegated by RN and unit protocol, document care on computer per department/unit standards, receives/relays all forms of communication accurately, promptly, courteously, and to the appropriate person, recognize care activities/procedures which need to be shared among disciplines to maximize patient-centered, efficient care, monitor patients and help determine if additional care is needed, assist with activities of daily living such as showers, getting dressed, walking, eating etc., be an advocate for the patients if they expressed a concern to me, relay any messages to the doctors or nurses, sometimes this would just mean listening to the patient talk about their diagnosis, making sure the equipment/supplies necessary to tend to each of the patients are stocked and in an orderly fashion, report maintenance issues to the appropriate area, report any concerns to management, train new staff during their 3 week orientation process.  This would include teaching them unit specific information, hospital rules/regulations, monitoring their progress and instruct them if they needed additional information or guidance.  Report back to the unit educator any weaknesses that I felt the new hire had to help them succeed on our unit.

I also worked in the in the OB/GYN office as a patient scheduling representative. 

My responsibilities consisted of but were not limited to the following.  Inbound/outbound calls, scheduling patient appointments for 15 different physicians, verification of benefits with insurance companies, making calls to outside doctor’s offices to receive additional paperwork/referrals, as well as pre-certification for procedures of upcoming patient appointments, constant contact with the physicians to make sure office staff was on the same page with procedures. I worked with the following systems, Availity, Navinet, IDX and KMAP, as well as work with several different insurance company websites to verify insurance coverage. 

Management is very friendly and hands on.  They help whenever needed.  Very approachable.  

Co-workers are also very helpful and approachable.  They want everyone to succeed.  Everyone's first concern is the patient and their well being.  

The hardest part of the job is when a patient passes away that you have gotten to know personally. 

The most enjoyable part of the job is meeting great people (the patients) and learning about their lives and families.

* Interacting with customers, providing information in answer to inquires about products, accounts, and services.
* Taking service inquiry calls from customers or clients and dispatching the suitable customer service associate to address questions.
* Answering the questions of customers regarding the organization’s products or services and its operation or maintenance.
* Handling and resolving customer complaints, or special orders via mail or phone.
* Receiving and processing orders, providing information concerning changes, pricing in service, and shipping.
* Investigating and correcting errors, following company and customer records.
* Interviewing customers to acquire information and explaining available services.
* Adjusting complaints concerning services or billing rendered.
* Coordinating customers’ service requirements with other appropriate departments as necessary to ensure effective customer service.
* Referring complaints of service or product failure or errors to appropriate personnel for investigation.
* Communicating solutions, successes, and opportunities to the Manager of customer service.
* Coordinates production of printed materials and prepress or printing services with customer's requirements.
* Confers with customers throughout production to keep them informed of status of job, to solicit and resolve inquiries and complaints, to   
   obtain approval of materials, such as artwork, color separations (film for each primary color), ink samples, and proofs, and to procure  
   information and materials needed by establishment personnel to process order. 
* Determines supplies, materials, and equipment needed for job order, plans and draws layout of job, and routes supplies and  
   materials, such as pasteups, artwork, copy, film, or prints, to work areas to put job order into production. 
* Monitors progress of job order throughout production, confers with establishment personnel, orders supplies, contracts services with
   outside vendors, and alters production schedule and job order to expedite timely processing of job in accordance with customer's   
   requirements and company standards.

Before covid, my work as medsurg floor nurse was great. Doable most days, busy some, but always felt fun to strive and get everything done in the tidy and perfect manner management wants. Pay and PTO accrual was lower than some hospitals in the metro but it was ok because ratios were great! 4 patients per nurse most nights, a charge with one or no patients to resources, and 2-4 CNAs to help. I had time to develop a relationship with patients, learn things, help co workers, etc. It was great, although busy like any hospital. Currently, patients are sick, there's no staff, everyone included the charge takes 5 patients and there are no CNAs. Every department is running around exhausted, not from covid patients, but patients in general. A new unit was opened up for overflow patients, but there is no newly hired staff so now were just more stressed and the ED got approximately 1 day reprieve from their hall beds and now they're back to mayhem and just as stressed as us floor nurses. Education and development, practice council, improvements, etc have all fallen to the wayside. We're too distracted trying to survive. We've received a bit of a pay increase and they are incentivizing overtime to an extreme extent. They are paying us appropriately for working extra in this environment. However, it doesn't help. People aren't picking up much. We're exhausted, working like it's an emergency overnight, and straight up tired. I don't know if any other hospital is better, but dang, we are not having a great time. 

I love working for the University of Kansas hospital. The work environment in most departments are absolutely fantastic and the people are irreplaceable. I worked my way up to be a full-time Nutrition assistant in the dietary department. I have learned a lot about different diets that are medically necessary and why they are so important to the treatment of patients. It has been a lot of customer service training and it has helped sharpen those skills for me. The hardest part for me has been that even though I am a KU employee, the management is through Aramark. Aramark is a good company, but the management that they have to run this kitchen should have been picked a little bit better. There feels like a lack of control, and with the new application process, it is even more difficult to hire people. With the department being so short staffed, there is mandatory overtime. For me, that is great because that means I have to potential to make double the amount you could in just the full-time position. But when this happens, your 5 days a week, with every other weekend off, turns into a 10 day stretch with one day off before it happens again. This happens for both Food Service Workers and Nutrition Assistants. I absolutely love the company I work for, and I have had nothing but positive experiences in all other aspects of this hospital. Dietary has some room for improvement and is a high stress position.

The culture and management styles have changed sine I started with the hospital.  The focus used to be patients and employees but has slowly become patients and awards.  Unnecessary employee stress, (office drama, politics, favoritism etc.) has become the new cultural norm and when actual necessary stress,(deadlines, work load, etc.) are added on then employees and managers become burned out very quickly.  Job work/life balance continues to be spoken of but is still non-existent for most employees. Job security and advancement opportunities depend on the department you work in.  The benefits are still extremely good even with the new healthcare act issues but fair compensation again depends on the department you work in and the manager you work under.  Overall assessment is that if you are looking for somewhere to work for a few years that looks good on your resume you've found it.  If you are looking for an employer you can be proud of working for, where you believe in what they are doing, trust the management you work under and retire after 30 or 40 years best keep looking because you will burn out long before reaching retirement age.

Most days were rewarding to work at KU Hospital.  As in most workplaces anymore there were politics and some inappropriate practices.  Nurse to Nurse comraderie was hit or miss, and as far as a teaching hospital, the physicians were a hit or miss too.   Some MDs were awesome to work with and communicated like professionals.   At the time when I was employed the atmosphere was to bring in the patients before we had the staffing to accomodate the increased census.  I floated all over the hospital and worked as a coordinator - the pay and benefits were good.  Management was different than what I was accustomed to in that they were usually gone to meetings and unavailable a majority of the time in both areas that I worked in.  Hardest part is the same everywhere, no one focuses on good training anymore.   Most enjoyable was learning new procedures, disease processes, but it did require seeking it out rarely did the units provide the education.  Most of my education came from posted symposiums and CEU attendance and as I mentioned earlier, seeking information in situations I was exposed to where I was not given the benefit of education.

Over my 3 yrs at this employer I had a great work life balance. They are very fair on balancing your personal time with your work schedule. The biggest challenge I experienced was being able to continue to learn and develop professionally, and having the items/ equipment/ technology to be effective in certain aspects of my position. The department I was in definitely turned into a buddy system and if you were not on the "in" with senior leadership there was little opportunity to grow and improve professionally. I was told this prior to working there but was skeptical until it happened to me first hand. Most enjoyable part of my job was having a work/life balance learning some new aspects of items when I was first hired on. The hardest part of my position was dealing with the numerous hoops and people  you have to jump through to approve the smallest of projects, the lack of continued learning offered by my department and the office politics that became a major issue in my specific department. Overall I would say great benefits and competitive pay, but can be very difficult based on department and senior leadership.

This is a great place to start your career as a therapist. You will get a ton of experience and the pay is decent. After a while, though, the cracks start to show and keep getting bigger. Benefits get worse every year, especially the health insurance. Rehab services is becoming little more than a box to check on the way to discharge. Recommendations are frequently not followed by case manage and physicians, and department leadership is out of touch—too focused on productivity. Acute therapy is sparse at best, and there is no effort made to ensure continuity of care, so quality of therapy is also diminished. Inpatient rehab is also getting worse, as admissions decline and nursing retention is poor. Department leadership does not support methods that prioritize patient outcomes, relying on dubious “data” from “objective measures.” But don’t you dare ask too many questions or appear critical of management; they will invent reasons to fire you while retaining lazy coworkers who have been reported for severe infractions such as Medicare fraud and HIPPA violations.


I will not speak on other departments, except the one I worked in. We were given more and more work that toed the line of being clinical and expected to complete. We were always looked down on and basically made to feel like we weren't only a physician's assistant but also the nurse's as well. We weren't treated well, everybody else in the department was recognized except the admin assistants. We were constantly lumped in with our PSRs and were treated like an afterthought, even though everybody came to us for answers from physicians to nurses to front desk. It's hard to keep a team spirit when everybody else gets support except our team and we were the smallest. We were the support, we kept the department running when we were barely scraping by. We were told that we needed to step up, but weren't asked if there was anything that could be done to help support us when we were 2 people short on a 6 person team supporting a 30 doctor department. It was a great department, until it wasn't. Nobody listened to what you've got to say, you're basically expected to smile and shut up while your workload gets higher and higher.

My summary concept still stands as true. The University of Kansas Hospital remains one of the top institutions in the country. That said, I left KU Hospital because of the upper managements mistreatment of its nursing staff.  They cut our pay and our benefits this year and they tried to spin it like a raise.  3-2 does not equal 10. It was absolutely insulting for CEO Bob Page to treat the nurses who brought KU up to its high standards in the first place like second rate property.  I think hundreds must have left the hospital because the nurses union sent me an email, after I had left, saying that the top brass had conceded the need to give KU nurses adequate compensation.  How much of a raise they got, I do not know.  Given the circumstances at KU, I would honestly have stayed there had other factors not lead me to move across country.  KU is the best hospital in the state of Kansas and the KCMO metro area.  You wont find better support and resources for the nursing staff, outside of the top brass, or better nurse to patient ratios anywhere else.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 15 salaries reported	$40.77 per hour
Radiologic technologist 1 salary reported	$48.08 per hour
Ct technologist 5 salaries reported	$45.08 per hour
Patient assistant 3 salaries reported	$17.00 per hour
Medical assistant 2 salaries reported	$22.72 per hour

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