registered nurse

medical assistant

nurse practitioner

research coordinator

certified medical assistant

UW Medicine

Pros
Health insurance and 401k benefits, the option to work overtime

Cons
Management views you as replaceable. The leads in this department are amazing and hardworking and the only thing keeping the department together. 
 Every single thing they tell you in your interview is not true. You will not be trained in the lab, you will only do phlebotomy all day everyday. Since you will not receive your training for the job you were hired for, there is no opportunity for job growth. There is no rotating weekend schedule, if you are a new hire after you have finished your initial orientation/training period, you will work every weekend for months on end. You are not allowed to swap shifts for coworkers. They will change your schedule every month and give you less than two weeks notice. All vacation and time off requests will go unanswered for weeks and months. They will not let you know their decision until a week in advance. All of the scheduling issues lead to a “call out culture.” There is no “on call” schedule which means there is no on call pay. They will call you on your days off and tell you that they need you to come in with no notice because they are short staffed. The department is so short staffed that sometimes there is only one person working in the department for the entire hospital for hours at a time on the weekends. It is not uncommon to be doing the job of two or three people at the same time. They do not look at the previous months schedule when creating the following month which will result in you being scheduled for 6-9 days in a row. Rather than acknowledge that there is a staffing shortage they will blame the employees for not getting all of the work done each day or by the deadline that they have set which results in a lot of micromanagement. Since the department is not able to meet their morning deadline you will receive a barrage of calls from the nursing staff and medical providers asking where their lab results are. In addition to short staffing, there are constant supply issues, so you will spend a lot of time scavenging for supplies all over the hospital in order to do your job. There are no meetings, so there is no back and forth dialogue with management. You will work with COVID patients on a daily basis with no hazard pay. If you work days your shift will start at 5:30 am and there are no buses that run that early. Parking is very expensive about $400/month, if you are lucky to find a coworker to carpool with then it is $240/month. The pay here is not very good.

I have worked for the UW Medicine a total of 5years. During that time I had an amazing manager who was clear about what was needed, fair and well organized. 

Once she retired the new manager came on and was extremely unorganized. People got fired because they followed her desitions. And multiple false claims were made about employees that could easily be verified as false yet she never did this. It was very odd. I ended up covering for multiple providers due to firing of other MA's and was then criticized because management did not realize my work load was doubled. Instead of figuring out the schedule she represented hard working employees as slacking. There was no communication and those that doubled work were accused of lacking in their original jobs. She did not know what was going on and people who took up the slack were let go. This is why my review is so low. it is my understanding that this manager has since been fired. 

Regarding my work day, it was good. We worked hard and I love my job as a Medical Assistant. Working primarily with a female ARNP I assisted in IUD placements and Colposcopies regularly. I did not have any part of the job that I would say was hard. I was well trained and fluent in everything that needed to be done. I also worked with Pediatrics that were high risk and it was very sobering to see the strength of the children and families dealing with debilitating illnesses. 

This review covers 
UW Medicine Kent/Des Moines. 

In Auburn and federal Way I was completely trained in the lab (except microscope). Record keeping, control schedules, proper specimen collection and processing and training. It was very busy yet I excelled and was able to cover any time the actual lab tech was absent or sent to fill in at another location.

I worked for NWH for over 8 years, I truly loved working there when I started but after the UW took over everything went down hill. They don't care about their employees at all anymore. They are more concerned about the bottom line than patient care or their employees. The raises are laughable, and the pay is lower than industry standard and as such they only seem to be able to retain staff that are ridiculously terrible at their job. 

Their admitting system was a program that was designed in 1986, their policies and procedures are so redundant that they will make you want to pull your hair out but they have to be because the employees who can't logic their way out of a paper sack. Upper management is no better, they lack basic logic skills as well and waste most of their time in meetings coming up with procedures for things they don't understand and implementing them without consulting anyone who actually does know what is going on. Their strategy for dealing with customer complains is to is to ignore them. Quality improvement seems to only make things worse instead of improving work flows. 

Don't expect to get an edible meal in the cafeteria even when they charge $6 a plate (no employee discount). Don't expect very many people to be able to efficiently complete the job without a lot of mistakes. Expect the patients to be angry A LOT about the quality of care they recieve and don't expect management to appreciate you at all, in fact just expect them to treat you like dirt if you make under 6 figures. 

I will truly miss some of the people there, but not enough to put up with it anymore. If you work the you will be treated like UW's redheaded stepchild.

The patients and the providers and the staff who understand that excellent patient care is what makes this organization worth working for.

Some departments are too removed from patient contact to understand, especially UW Medicine Administration.  
Managers and supervisors often use fear as a management style.
Communication regarding performance is often disjointed or extreme. You could be informed of an error or problem that occurred 5 months prior.

Delegate is a concept that Administrators exercise freely, as they are swamped with a schedule of continual meetings where they gossip about subordinate workforce.  My former manager would frequently go out for lunch and have meat and potato martini's, only to come back for an hour and then leave for an 'off-site' meeting or work from home.  

For most departments, compensation is above average if you consider additional benefits.  

For high-level Administration officials, compensation is very good.
Especially if you can eliminate some of the higher paid staff for fresh recruits who can be hired at 20% less, which will allow additional employee thus requiring a boost in salary due to 'additional management of personal responsibilities'. 

The patients you serve really are what made working for this company worthwhile.

I went into this job feeling ecstatic about the position and the opportunity to join such a great company. However, I was very quickly underwhelmed and realized I put this company on a pedestal. Nearly every one of my colleagues would talk badly about this place, even those who’d been here for years, saying the only reason they stayed was because they liked their hours and wanted to reap their retirement benefits. Other than that, communication and compensation are very poor and people will literally tell you to “keep your resume open” because it’s not known as a good company to work for anymore (depending on your role) and job satisfaction ranges from little to nonexistent. Also, employees will watch Netflix, play games, and read personal books during their shift rather than working so the accountability and motivation is severely lacking.

Toxic work environment, expectations to produce results unobtainable without extrasensory perception skills.  If you work less than 50 hours a week you are slacking and not showing a pro-active approach to your work.  If you are away from your desk, you are not working.  You must be there before your manager arrives or you are late, and if you leave before your manager does you are leaving early.  Multiple meetings where managers argue about semantics and expect lower ranked employees attend and not interrupt.  Frequent redirection "I need this stat, only to be told an hour later "why are you working on that I need this done".  Manager would say in meeting, "people have been saying that (something untrue)".  Would request time off of 7 days to travel, only to be told I can approve MTW and MT of the following week but ThF I can't approve because ", so never took vacation for 2 years because of this.   I was stupid for thinking optimism and a flexible attitude would make it all work out.  I was wrong.

When I first started at UW Medicine in the IT department (less than 3 years ago) my peers were really happy with their jobs and the company culture was really conducive to a healthy work/life balance. One of the company pillars was to be an employer of choice, and I felt they did a good job of accomplishing that. However in the last 6-8 months, it's seemed that the company no longer cares about being an employer of choice. One of the main perks and reasons I decided to accept the job offer was due to the flexible working option of 2 remote days/week. Previously policy was that we could work from home 2 days/week - now we are not allowed to work remotely at all. I also do not feel that hard work is rewarded and management has really disappointed me with some very short-sighted decisions recently.

UW could be the top employer if they had administrators who cared more about their employees and less about themselves. Unfortunately due to the lack of compassion at the part of the administration, the culture is one of fear and stress, with very little support or compassion. When a manager tells members of the team “everyone is expendable” then you can’t expect employees to feel safe. When the manager emails reprimands and calls impromptu meetings to scold employees like little children, then you can’t expect employees to stay. Many stay for the amazing benefits, but when numerous coworkers are miscarrying you have to wonder if the stressful, negative environment is worth it. The administrators scratch their heads, dumbfounded, wondering why the turnover in UW IT is the highest in the area which tells me common sense doesn’t come with a Master’s Degree.

Working at a Call Center is very different than any other job I have ever had. it was very fast-paced and complicated, with many moving parts to the puzzle. I was constantly challenged to stay up-to-date with the information and policies. Things were constantly bust and constantly changing. The job improved my computer skills as well as my phone etiquette. I was able to focus on my customer service skills as well as my mediation skills with upset patients. The job was stressful and I always went home thinking about clients and how I could help. Overall, the job was challenging and I was well compensated but with no face-to-face interaction it was frustrating; I ultimately left the job to go back to school.

Coordinate and provide patient support services such as patient registration, scheduling appointments, referral scheduling and coordination, and insurance verification at the UW Medicine Contact Center.  Under general supervision, conducts outbound communication, both verbal and written, with UW Medicine patients, UW Medicine staff, and other members of the public by telephone, electronic mail, and through the patient portal web application to provide appointment scheduling assistance to patients or their care providers. Provides patient support services in accordance with pre-existing, highly detailed, standard operating procedures. May make routine edits or updates to existing standard operating procedures.  Demonstrates in-depth knowledge of UW Medicine’s mission, vision and service offerings;

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 6 salaries reported	$58.64 per hour
Medical assistant 21 salaries reported	$33.48 per hour
Nurse practitioner 11 salaries reported	$13,826 per month
Research coordinator 4 salaries reported	$57,000 per year
Certified medical assistant 5 salaries reported	$5,669 per month

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