Deborah Heart and Lung Center – “May want to wait for conditions to improve before applying here. Hopefully the upswing will be soon.”

Pros

The hospital is known as a charitable hospital, never billing patients and operating off donations and what insurance pays only. It is a small enough facility that you can feel as though you are really able to attend to your patients' needs. The majority of the staff is truly dedicated to their work and their patients, and much of the staff exhibit strong loyalty and have been employed by Deborah for decades. Tuition assistance and repayment are available for related fields of study, and educational advancement is encouraged. Though termination of employment "for any reason" is a reserved right by the organization, arbitrary firings do not occur. Scheduling is typically flexible for shiftworkers. 32 hours per week is considered full time and eligible for benefits. The benefits package is very good. A new wing of single patient rooms is under construction.

Cons

Senior leadership is poor, and apparent recent mismanagement of funds is causing massive layoffs. Wages are low in comparison to surrounding hospitals, raises are capped at a mere 30 cents per year possible - and rarely is the entire 30 cent raise awarded. This year there were no raises whatsoever. There are fears that Deborah is a "sinking ship". Billboards, other advertising, and various strategies to enhance patient census are being employed, however, and there is hope for a recovery. Many NJ hospitals are facing money issues at this time, however, due to recent funding cuts by state government. We're all facing recession, the question is who will last - hopefully DHLC will.

Advice to Senior Management

Retire immediately. Firm policies and operating procedures must be set in place for everything from supply levels to billing to scope of practice of different level employees. More multiskilled technicians on all floors could offset the current very high work stress on the nurses - and more skills should be taught to these workers for their best utilization. Examples are venipuncture and IV insertion, ability to enter orders into the computer system, initial patient admission interview, etc. At the current high census requirement for nurses, safe nursing becomes difficult and customer oriented nursing is next to impossible. A "deal with it" attitude on the part of management is exactly wrong. Because of the age and length of employment of some managers and employees, change is overtly avoided - but it must come or the hospital must fail to function. Outsourcing work is backward, and much of what is outsourced can be done by trained personnel cheaply, so long as those personnel are trained properly and are up to the task. Keeping people employed who are unwilling to efficiently perform or learn to update to current methods across the country must be eliminated - not kept simply for sentiment or seniority. Major layoffs of lower-paid personnel to save the jobs of a few higher paid managers is the opposite of how to handle this situation. One unnecessary management position elimination could save several of your worker bees, who you will need desperately if and when your patient census picks up. And when you don't have them, customer satisfaction will be terribly low no matter how nice the new rooms are. In addition, eliminating inpatient pediatrics was in all likelihood a giant step backward financially. You're looking in all the wrong areas to save money. It amounts to nitpicking, you need a management amputation - all these positions created for people to sit around and look busy simply because they've been there a long time... and you're encouraging your active floor nurses to retire early? Madness.