Working Conditions in Prestigious Hospitals?

[NurseLyla]

Hi everyone. I am new to posting on this site but have been reading here for a while. I am a fairly new RN. I have been working as a hospital/ bedside/floor/clinical nurse for just over 3 years. I work in a hospital in a fairly small town in VA. I have been contemplating a move to a bigger city, perhaps to Jacksonville, Florida one day in the future and would eventually like to work in one of the well known hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic. My question is...have any of the posters here ever worked in one of the most well known prestigious hospitals in the US, such as the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Cedars-Sinai, Cleveland Clinic, UCLA, etc? If so, are the working conditions there as abysmal as they are at most other hospitals? If so, does the pay make up for it? I am not asking for rates of pay or personal information of course, but I am curious as to how the nurses at those kinds of organizations are treated by their employers as compared to those of us in other smaller hospitals and if it is any better. Thanks.

[BeachBayNurse]

I work at a hospital that is not as prestigious as say the Mayo Clinic, but is very large and well known. I have many friends that work for the Mayo Clinic also. Just comparing the large hospital I work at full time with the smaller, less prestigious hospital I work at per-diem, I feel much better treated at the larger hospital. There is less time for drama and favorites, as the hospital needs a larger staff to run it. I get the feeling at the smaller hospital that I am not needed or valued.

[RN1982]

I worked at a so-called prestigious hospital and the nurses were not treated that well. I guess it just depends on where you go. There was a lot of gossip, a lot of mandatory meetings about how to keep the doctors happy and on the unit I worked on, we were always short staffed and we were never able to get any help from the float pool because they were always short staffed. Now I work at another prestigious hospital thats in the inner-city and I love it. Nurses are treated better, staffing is better, teamwork is better. Like I said, it just depends on where you go.

[Bill E. Rubin]

I'm not a nurse yet, but I work as an aide at a prestigious hospital and have accepted a job on another unit there as a nurse starting this summer. The pay is slightly lower than in the other big teaching hospitals in the city, but turnover is very low... nurses tend to stick around and seem happy there. The floors I'm familiar with have decent staffing ratios (I'm going to be working on an acute medical floor with a 3-1 patient to staff ratio) and scheduling is usually staff-directed, though newbies are usually expected to take on more night and weekend shifts than the ones who have been around longer.

Patients tend to be more acute at these institutions and there are many diverse opportunities to develop your career.