Some context:
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I work in healthcare in Patient Access (registration), and have been in my current position for over a year now.
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The hospital I work at is part of a county-wide system that itself got bought out by a larger healthcare company back in 2021, and is currently undergoing an expansion project set to finish next year.
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They upgraded their systems to Epic shortly before I was hired.
When I first started working here, an immediate red flag was everyone complaining about our boss. Most of these boiled down to “she’s never around” and “she doesn’t know that much about how the department operates”. I’m the sort of person who likes to make my own judgements on someone, but I ended up agreeing with this assessment after a couple months.
Another red flag was my training which consisted largely of being partnered with a coworker who would attempt to teach me during their usual shift. This went about as well as one could expect, and was made worse by the constant changes being made to our systems throwing everyone off-kilter. It was topped off with me being thrown on near-constant midnight shifts at the ED Check-in desk, which consists of staring at the wall for eight hours and occasionally checking someone into the ER (which takes about a minute). I eventually started getting other shifts, but only after about 4-5 months.
Nominally, we’re supposed to be a paperless department, but most of my coworkers just print out forms and have them signed by hand due to computer issues or a preference for that method. Management has tried to curb that recently, but hasn’t had that much success. Similarly, they’ve been trying to stop cell phone usage during work hours, which has universally failed.
I had a 5-day vacation last week, and when I got back I noticed that a series of 1-on-1 meetings had been arranged with just about everyone in the department. Normally these are supposed to be spread out across the entire month, but that fell apart almost immediately when my boss tried implementing it and they’ve been fairly sporadic since then. Near the end of my first shift back, however, I was informed by email to see my boss in her office the next day, and that I should consider bringing union representation.
Despite the extremely short notice (and confusion about a meeting taking place three days before my 1-on-1), I managed to contact my union rep and we got to the meeting. She pulls out the Performance Improvement Plan, and this is where the red flag turns right to crimson: there’s a fairly serious typo on it, and she casually pens in a correction instead of reprinting it. There’s also no signature lines for a witness or the union rep (both of whom are present), so the signed document looks messy.
The actual content of the PIP focuses mainly on issues prevalent within the department, including cell phone usage and proper form obtainment, alongside a baffling section about focusing on preregistration of patients (which we had started doing only a few weeks prior). I had actually done a few days worth of pre-reg, but when she brought up the days I had done she merely flicked through a few patients that had been done by others and went “not seeing anything”. She relented once she got to a day that was almost entirely done by me, but it highlighted how little attention she seems to give something enshrined in the PIP we were about to sign.
Because of the inclusion of the departmental issues, I believe it’s likely that most of the department might end up getting pipped over the coming weeks. As I was heading into the meeting, a coworker was leaving what I’m guessing was her PIP meeting, since her 1-on-1 was scheduled to happen two hours after that.
That last part, alongside the general sloppiness of the meeting and the PIP, leads me to believe that this was all thrown together very quickly without a clear plan, possibly spurred by the parent company being dissatisfied with our department ahead of the expansion’s opening and delivering some form of ultimatum to management. Maybe this will become clearer with time, but that’s all I’ve got to go on right now.