The Children's Hospital Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

The care provided to the patients is beyond compare. Children's lives are saved on a daily basis.

Cons

People are promoted to management who have no skills for it. Gossip is tolerated and even encouraged. Toxic managers and directors are common.

Advice to Senior Management

Policies are created with no plans or resources to implement or enforce. Good intentions will not save the company from poor internal practices with research.

Pros

Providing quality care to children.
Employees (clinical and non clinical) dedicated to healthcare of children.
Beautiful facilities and state of the art hospital.
Benefits are good.

Cons

Total lack of communication between senior management and everyone else.
Consultants are continually brought in to review process but the results are never shared with employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate with staff. Do not allow an environment of indecision and adversity to change. The national rankings may not hold overtime with the level of employee discontent.

Pros

You can feel proud that you work to support the care of sick children. Pay is competitive.

Cons

Benefits are average. Management practices are old -- seem to come from the '60s or '70s. No private, quiet workspace for knowledge workers. Poor employee review system. Modern technology is used for administration, but not used well -- behind modern practices. Poor communication between management and employees, and between clinical and non-clinical staff. Lack of willingness to affect change. Very bureaucratic. Campus somewhat isolated. Lack of parking.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve communication. Reduce bureaucracy, embrace managed change. Create modern environment conducive to productivity of modern knowledge worker. Increase respect given to non-clinical staff.

Pros

The care given to the children is top notch. The opportunity to be part of the care is such a delight.

Cons

Working with sick kids can make some people mean. The overall atmosphere is eat or be eaten.

Advice to Senior Management

Be willing to clean house and get rid of the trouble makers, especially those who do not recognize the benefit of being a teaching hospital.

Pros

Mostly friendly. Decisions are consensus driven and respectful. Pay is pretty good. Recent management replacement may be sign that organization is moving in right direction if not there yet. Easy to be proud of job that (indirectly) helps sick children. Communication about changes in organization and general news is pretty good.

Cons

Overall, management is friendly and respectful, but very lacking in basic management and project management training (feedback, delegation, purpose of goals, time management, etc.). Some managers are even toxic. Fear of change stands in the way of progress. Consensus driven decisions can sometimes slow things down. Organization is not always honest with itself about how to improve. Lack of real offices means knowledge work suffers. Parking is bad but may improve soon.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend time learning management and project management skills. Be honest about how the organization works, or improvement isn't possible.

Pros

To help children! The ability to learn from coworkers. Working with people who care about others. Active, never boring place!
Pride in the community

Cons

Somewhat "corporate" environment, chain of command is super long, There are too many different committees which often leads to a breakdown in communication and responsibility.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to the "little people" who are truly what keeps us going and who actually have much more contact with patients and families than executives do.

Pros

If altruism and a sense of doing something good for your community is important to you in a career then The Children's Hospital is an excellent place to work. Additionally, the hospital does do a good job promoting a work life balance for all of it's employees.

Cons

Senior management does a poor job of understanding IT. Internal promotion is almost non-existent. Seniority is valued to highly; I worked with dozens of people who were unqualified to perform their jobs and had held the same position for ten or more years. The hiring practices in senior management are questionable at best. On more than one occasion an unqualified senior manager was replaced with a less qualified senior manager.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to take advice from your staff. The people who work day to day with your patients and support structure often have a much better idea of what they need to improve their work environment and the service to your patience than you do.

Pros

Unique and complex learning experiences in one of the top rated hospitals in the nation. Many educational opportunities.The nursing staff and management are supportive. Training for new grads is superior with several months and levels of experience provided. Children's offers many opportunities for personal ownership of one's nursing practice. Staffing is usually pretty good and allows for time to spend educating and interacting with families. Interdisciplinary collaboration is generally respected and physicians, nurses, physical therapists and other health professionals work well together and seem to value each others' experience and knowledge. Overall, Children's Hospital has provided me with my most positive nursing experience after 15 years in the profession.

Cons

The new facility is out of the way and quite a commute for many employees. Inservices and competencies often require nurses to come in on their day off. Especially for those working the night shift, this can be extremely inconvenient, requiring one to give up sleep in order to make the commute in to 'learn' things that are often extremely basic and redundant and could be taught via the internet or at the bedside during a nurse's regular shift. Office politics and low morale have been an increasingly negative issue since the move to the new hospital. Office politics and popularity contests seem to have even influenced internal promotions, leading to the best and most loyal candidates being overlooked at times.

Advice to Senior Management

Incorporate mandatory competencies and inservices with the employee's set schedule to avoid additional commuting and time on the clock.