registered nurse

clinical technician

administrative coordinator

medical assistant

physician assistant

Tufts Medical Center

Day-to-Day Work 
On paper the job description looks fine. Transport patients, sanitize equipment, collect wheelchairs, and check in with staff are all things I expected and was prepared to do. The issue is how it actually plays out. Instead of handling one task at a time, management expects you to juggle everything at once. You will be called to transport a patient while also being told to move stretchers, collect beds, and track down missing wheelchairs. There is no system in place, so you waste time running around the hospital searching for equipment instead of focusing on the patient in front of you. The description sells it as routine, but in reality it is chaotic, disorganized, and physically exhausting.  

Organization and Equipment 
The department is one of the most poorly organized environments I have ever seen. If a patient needs a wheelchair, you have to wander across the entire hospital trying to find one. There is no dedicated supply. The basement is technically set aside for transport, but equipment is scattered in the halls. The small equipment room is crammed to the point where you have to move multiple items just to get what you need. This wastes valuable time and delays patient care. It is especially disappointing coming from an establishment where every other department is organized, or at least appears that way. 

Work Environment 
Patients are usually fine, and many are pleasant to talk to. Coworkers are decent people but you can tell they are miserable being stuck here. Nobody smiles and there is no sense of team morale. Management is split. Two of the three managers are fine and do their job well enough. The other, who is the second head of the department, does not really know how to make things work. It is not that he does not try, but the way he talks comes off as arrogant and snarky. It creates tension instead of solving problems. Overall he comes across as a bit of a weirdo, which is not what you want in leadership.  

Schedules and Workload 
The shifts are consistent once you pick one, so you will usually stick to the same hours. First shift runs from 6 to 2:30 or 8 to 4:30. Second shift runs from 2:30 to 11 or 3 to 11:30. Overnight shifts run either 9 pm to 7 am from Thursday through Monday or 7 pm to 7:30 am from Monday through Thursday. Pay does increase the further you move away from first shift. The downside is that the workload can swing back and forth. Sometimes it is manageable, but other times they stack tasks in a way that makes it impossible to keep up. The overnight shift is especially difficult since only one person covers the entire hospital. Overtime is available but not worth the stress. 

Pay, Benefits, and Growth 
 The pay does not reflect the workload. Benefits are minimal and not enough to make up for the conditions. The most discouraging part is that there is absolutely no path to growth. The department keeps you in the same position for as long as possible. People have worked here for 15 to 20 years without moving up. Management itself has been around that long and still has not made basic improvements to how the department runs.  

The Good and the Bad 
The best part of this job is talking to patients and leaving at the end of the day. The worst part is the lack of organization, teamwork, and respect from management. The equipment situation alone shows how little has been done to improve things over the years.  

Overall 
I came in with high expectations and left extremely disappointed. This job might serve as a short-term paycheck but it is not something anyone should stay in long term. There are no opportunities to grow, the environment is miserable, and the department is stuck in the past. If you are looking for a job where you feel valued, look elsewhere.

Tufts Medical Center Emergency Room is a fast paced, trauma one facility. I have learned a lot in regards to medical knowledge, equipment usage/function, routine, requirements. It requires a lot of attention to detail, dependability, multi-tasking, and strength in dealing with some of the difficult staff and patients both. It tests character on a daily basis, requiring one to keep their composure, and professionalism. I spend much of the shift responding to doctors orders; answering calls, placing calls for physicians, inputting orders, updating outside facility information/diagnostic imaging. Sometimes doctors can be demanding and short with us, but in a busy trauma center, you cant let that deter or upset you, it means you work harder to assure what they want or need exceeds their expectations. I can say that I have a reputation at Tufts of going above and beyond what is asked of me, and I take pride in that. Being personally thanked by a physician is so very rewarding. We learn the importance of teamwork (the Boston Marathon bombing was an exceptional display of teamwork!) and how detrimental it is to have a successful, functioning and organized department!

This hospital is right in the middle of Boston where a studio apartment can run you around $1500/month. Imagine if you have kids and need 2 or 3 bedrooms... $18/hr may seem great but when you take out taxes and health insurance, it just isn't enough to live in Boston. Now any position you work at a hospital is going to be stressful but... when you have poor management; it makes it worse. The people above the Managers don't really care about what you need in order to work better. They care about money. They make decisions without knowing what it takes to do your job. I was there for 2 years. At first, my department did not have a Manager. The one that was fired was super nice and knew what she was doing. Unfortunately, she realized what everyone else knew and left. Our new Manager, although very nice, did not have a clue what she was doing in my opinion. She even confessed to me that she used to pay people to do her homework in college. Her boyfriend was constantly there. She hired her friend to take an open position instead of someone who was a lot more qualified. Her friend acted like she knew everything but she knew NOTHING! The Nurses think that they're the Managers and are annoying!

A typical day at Tufts Medical Center in the Internal Medicine residency training program starts off at 7 AM with inpatient rounds. As a resident, I am the main doctor in charge of running all matters regarding patient care. I am supervised in my decisions by the attending physician, however the autonomy given to residents to run our teams is amazing here. I learnt to practice evidenced based medicine independently during  my time here. Since rotations are divided by sub-specialty of Internal Medicine, I learnt to practice medicine under physicians from several different backgrounds. My co-workers are very hardworking and self motivated, and the ancillary staff in our hospital is very supportive. The hardest part of the job is having a balance between work and life, however this improves with practice and by learning essential time management skills (which I have). Because I feel I have excellent communication skills, the easiest part of the job for me is talking to patients and their families.

I just took for tours and not truly trained. I figured things out on my own. I believe I was set up to fail and I was blackballed and told I'd be cross trained in the other areas besides pulling from Carousels. I started off as 2nd shift since i explained that I had specialist doctor appointments on certain days  that were scheduled months before I was hired. I also had requested days off in advance and I got doctor's notes for all my absences. If the clique there doesn't like you, start looking for another job. Management doesn't know how to manage. They had watched  a dozen times how no one would help me but if you were in the clique they all jumped right in to get everything sorted for the big run. Onmicells were always overfilled and rooms were a mess. I was accused of things I never did like smoke in the locker room and refuse to work but when I asked where he witnessed this he said he heard it. Id be in the bathroom and hear someone talking about me. I never did anything to anyone. Oh and No One would communicate with me
 I found out I was deliberately left out of messages but mgmt was always on me to communicate when I was. 


I must say, I have a learned  a lot at Tufts Medical Center in regards skills. Working in a hospital, you not only gain knowledge of Mental and physical health, but also the abilty to mutli-task and knowing how to keep professioanl poise during unexpected situtations. 

As far as the Culture and Management, I was dissappointed. Mangement felt like they did not care about the employees. And in the department I as working in, it felt more like being around bitter, overworked Nurses, who felt underappreciated and used. I believe that made it hard for any one who was a new employee to ask for help. The Nurses seemed do more gossiping than helping one another. The techs/medical assisitant were overworked and seemed to get yelled at majority of time. I have never heard mangement ever compliment them or applaud them for the good work they have done. Management need to be less robotic and more compassionate.

But with that said, I did meet a couple of amazing Nurses who showed me how to be professioanal, positive and kind while working in such an intense and depressed environment. I do appreciate them for showing me what great work ethics is.

I was hooked the moment I entered Tufts Medical Center as a volunteer in April 2011. Theirs is a culture of humility - the world revolves around our patients. From working towards NCQA accredidation, to champtioning our practice's patient centered medical home transformation - my experience at Tufts MC has been an excellent crash course in the fundamentals of healthcare administration.

My manager likes to re enforce the mantra, "you'd better be either helping a patient, or helping someone who sees patients at all times". This has been the greatest learning lesson for me at Tufts as everything we do is focused on improving outcomes:  Patient access, outreach, employee engagement and training, population management, data collection and capture, clinic expansion - none of our efforts succeed if we fail to place our patients at the center of our universe.

My favorite aspect of healthcare that it is one of the rare industries in which almost nobody chooses to invest, but upon which everyone depends at some point in his or her life. I love going home at night knowing I helped someone today, and that it is my job to do so.

This job and hospital are great to get experience and break into the healthcare industry, but overall the work environment is extremely toxic. Managers show clear favoritism to employees based on seniority. The hospital has been purposefully creating staffing issues, citing "productivity" as a reason to not have more techs on shift. You will often be the only tech scheduled on the night shift for 20+ patients and none of the nurses will help you with their patients as they sit on their computers and pretend to be "busy" while gossiping about other employees and management at the nurses' station. They specifically go out of their way to poach students for these jobs, then proceed to not respect your school schedule and expect you to put this soul-sucking, low-paying job before your school priorities. The only plus side of this job was the patients, who generally were very nice and made the experience more pleasant. 

Over the course of 6 years at Tufts Medical Center as a senior lead OR-pharmacist, I have had the opportunity to be a part of a team that focused on complex medical patient intervention and drug safety. As a member of the Drug Safety Committee, I have been responsible for reviewing all new order entry templates, potential policies and drug administration guidelines, as well as perform analysis of medication related errors.
My additional clinical experience includes 1 year at Bioscrip-specialty pharmacy, serving as the link between the pharmaceutical company and patients, focusing intently on patient education, counseling, tracking of patient adherence to recommended therapies, and 340B billing. It was the contrast of these two clinical settings, which have developed my unique skill set; a mix between complex medical care in both acute inpatient and outpatient settings, as well as education, research, and community outreach.

I worked in the OR for 2 years. I made a lot of great friends at my time there, but ultimately left the establishment due to workplace harassment. I was being bullied by a colleague and when bringing it up to management, they basically said I deserved it due to my reputation. I had meetings with the Chief where they would try help me. There have been leaders from different departments that would send reminders and have staff meetings stating to be kind to one another, don't assume things about people, don't believe everything someone says on a persons' reputation. Everything that showed that what I went through was not acceptable. Yet nothing changed with how I was being treated. I had to switch from full time to per diem and eventually left that job when I found out I was not able to transfer departments due to my reputation. All because a colleague did not like me.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 145 salaries reported	$57.21 per hour
Clinical technician 126 salaries reported	$22.77 per hour
Administrative coordinator 158 salaries reported	$25.63 per hour
Medical assistant 125 salaries reported	$24.19 per hour
Physician assistant 82 salaries reported	$146,805 per year

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