LisaTheNurse

lenox hill is not an excellent hospital. i've worked part-time at lenox hill hospital for over 2 years now and have also maintained part-time work at neighboring nyu hospital, while doing per diem for nyp cornell and i can tell you from personal experience that the patients at lenox hill hospital aren't happy, the nurses aren't happy and the medical staff is not what it once used to be. ten years ago, lenox hill always had a full-house with regards to admissions. today, they have multiple (as in 5 or more ) units closed at the same time. they have a beautiful er that is empty half the time and medical staff that is comprised mostly of 3rd tier residents and attendings that are way past their prime. you're absolutely right in this entire statement. lenox hill can no longer attract the high level talent that they used to, due to the uncertainty they have in remaining open. lenox hill nurses are not happy. we've been dealing with negotiations issues that have rendered our contracts almost useless. we experienced no increase in salary from last year to this year, due to the struggling financial times the hospital is going through. we also don't get full tuition reimbursement as many have advertised. along with that, you have the fact that we have very little support from management and it's pretty much us out there all alone. new york presbyterian (columbia & cornell), mount sinai, nyu, hospital for special surgery & sloan kettering all have clinical nurse specialists on each floor that not only help to train new nurses, but implement new approaches to better patient care. that is the "new job" you made reference to that is present in many nyc hospitals, the clinical nurse specialist. don't sell lenox hill hospital to a new grad as a good place to start their nursing career. their staff is constantly leaving to neighboring hospitals and their financial instability can place these new grads in a bad place if the hospital or their unit closes. again, all of these things are just my opinion. if you'd like to go and give it a try, by all means do so. afterwards, please come back and tell us of your experiences. p.s. i've practiced as a nurse for 20 years now. i worked for northshore lij for 12 years, nyu for 5 full-time years, nyp cornell and lenox hill for 2 years. out of all of them, lenox has been the worse..

To all the newgrad RNs, I don't know if you folks read up on the financial situations of the NYC hospitals, but Lenox Hill is in dire financial shape. They are pretty much practically claiming bankruptcy and are desperately looking for another institution to purchase their hospital. (See Links Below) http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/10/05/2009-10-05_lenox_hill_hospital_is_now_ailing_in_need_of_merger.html http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/new_york_hospital_havoc_xgk29Fy5h6b5vfACE8BWPL What does this mean for nurses? They are constantly closing units. Many times you will find that managers are getting fired overnight. The overall morale isn't good due to everyone knowing that they are in a bind. With regards to the tarining new RNs get from the hospitals, it is not strong enough. They set you up with a week or so of classroom training and then send you to the floors for a month or two of preceptorship. On paper it sounds fine, but there is a problem. First, the preceptor you will get assigned to (Nurse you shadow) has not been trained to properly play the role of a preceptor. If anything, they tend to just pair you up with a senior nurse who has been there 5+ years. While some will say that it sounds like a smart idea, remember that just because you have been doing something for 5+ years, doesn't mean that you can properly teach someone to do the work the RIGHT way. You will find many 20+ year veterans there who are very outdated in their ways and incapable of doing basic nursing skills (like starting an IV or properly piggybacking IV medications). If you want to learn how to be a strong staff nurse, you need a person that has been trained to perform as a preceptor and/or someone who has a role (along with academic accolades) like that of clinical nurse specialist who has the proper school and on-site training to guide you through all the essentials of being a staff nurse. Again, all of this is just my opinion, but I would truly reconsider. Lisa P.S. They will sell you the hospital very well come interview time, but look at what is truly important to you. (How does their salary compare to other hospitals, Quality of health insurance, Educational reimbursement, Potential for growth, The hospitals ability to stay open over the next few years & also ask how many times your future unit has been closed over the last few years)

One of my friends that works on 9 Uris called me a few days ago and told me that her unit has been closed. The worst part of it all is that management does not let the nurses in on the true workings behind the scenes, instead they play a game of musical units, where once the music stops, no one knows what units will be left open.

It doesn't matter too much whether or not you have a ADN versus a BSN when it comes to getting a job at a hospital. I'll put it to you this way, every public/city (HHC) hospital in NYC will hire you with just an Associates degree and they pay pretty good as compared to privates, they also have the best pension and union. The HHC's have over 20 or so hospitals in the city, so you won't run into trouble getting a job. (http://www.nyc.gov/html/hhc/html/facilities/directory.shtml) With regards to private hospitals, you can ALSO get jobs at private hospitals with just an Associates degree. For instance, the following privates won't give you a hard time about having an Associates: Beth Israel Hosp. St. Lukes Roosevelt Hosp. St. Vincents Hosp. Lenox Hill Hosp. North Shore LIJ Now that I have given you an exhaustive list of over 25 hospitals (Private & Public), I hope you reconsider a little. While I don't recommend you stay with only an Associates, starting with just an associates will not close any doors for you. On the flip side of the coin, let me play Devil's advocate and present you with a small list of private hospitals that will not hire you if you only have an Associates with no experience (KEY TO THIS PHRASE IS ONLY HAVING AN ASSOCIATES WITH NO EXPERIENCE). Once you have 2-3 years of experience with an Associates degree, pretty much everyone will hire you because experience tends to even out the playing field. On to the list of hospitals that will NOT hire you with only an Associates and no experience: Cornell Presbyterian Columbia Presbyterian Mount Sinai NYU Hospital for Special Surgery Key to remember here is that these big name hospitals have a huge list of applicants applying every month and while a BSN candidate fresh out of school will have an advantage over an Associates degree candidate fresh out of school, they both will get rejected when compared to a BSN nurse with experience or an ADN nurse with experience in the unit/specialty that they are looking to fill. I've been a nurse for 20 years and I started with a ADN, attained a BSN and as of 6 years ago got my MSN and to tell you the truth, sometimes it boils down to who you know as opposed to how many little letters you have after your name.. Good Luck!

Excellent way of putting it! The majority of degrees that you can get after only 4 years of study (or a B.S.) will not earn you the 75K that is now being earned by nurses with their license.

Well, not quite.. You see, every floor at Lenox is composed of 4 distinct units, broken up into the Lachman, East, Wollman and Uris wing. What is essentially going on from what most are saying is that the Wollman wing will be closing after January. In other words, all units that fall under the Wollman wing will be closing and the rest of the units (Uris, Lachman, East) will remain open. The bigger problem emerges when you realize that there are many particular units that although not belonging to the Wollman wing are already closed (4 East, 4 Lachman, 2 Lachman (By default) and a few others that I can't recall at the moment). So essentially what you have is 25-30% of the hospital closed for "Improvements". That is how layoffs get their start by having a few units close and then more following. What's sad is that the Nursing Assistants will get placement if and when the hospital decides to completely close while the nurses will be left to fend for themselves. Since the Nursing Assistants belong to 1199, they can be placed in another 1199 facility, yet we the nurses have a union that saw its inception at Lenox, so besides Lenox, we would have nowhere to go or be placed. Hoping for the best here!

It is terrible. I just hope that these new nurses can get a job elsewhere with the month or two of experience that they gained at Lenox.

That's the way it works at Lenox Hill. Don't feel too bad, at least you did not start the job to then find yourself getting laid off. I have been with the hospital for many years and one day I just showed up to do my night shift and to my surprise found my unit completely closed off. Good luck with your search Pinkgator.

The orthopedic floor won't close anytime soon, that brings in a lot of patients. The oncology unit on the 4th floor is a different story, it always has a low census and the talks have already started amongst the floaters with regards to it closing soon, whether it be rumor or not, I wouldn't pass it by management to pull the plug on it to save some money. The worse part about it all is that management never lets the nurses in on the issues at hand. I randomly came in to do my regular night shift one day and found my floor closed! Closed! What type of consideration is that?

We don't have the luxuries you speak of. I do Per Diem work for HHC hospitals and I can tell you truthfully that the HHC hospitals have the exact accommodations that we offer at Lenox Hill in my honest opinion. The rooms are pretty much identical. If anything, the HHC hospitals are far more advanced than we are. At the HHC's, they use electrical Blood Pressure Cuffs as opposed to the manual ones. At the HHC, they have gone completely paperless, for instance, all of their notes are done on the computer with a simple click for each entry, no need to type anything in. They don't have to transcribe any medications onto medsheets or even deal with a cardex. What's worse, the HHC has Patient Care Technicians that do your Vitals, Glucose Readings and provide the patients with their Hygienic needs. At Lenox, we have to deal with manual blood pressure cuffs that tend to be very innacurate once they get decalibrated. We have to deal with everything on paper. All of our notes are on paper, every single medication that is ordered we transcribe onto paper. All of the patient's information, databases and what not, have to be on paper. Some might say that it can't be that bad, but imagine if a doctor is going through a brain fart and decides to order some med for a patient and then 5 minutes later realizes that there might be a better option and discontinues the old medication for the new and then further along realizes that the attending prefers the patient to be on yet another med all together, well all these changes of minds between them can be traced by way of our entries onto med sheets. Every single order that these brainiacs decide to put in and remove and reenter and remove and change etc. has to be copied by hand by us nurses over and over again. We lose so much time trying to keep up with the orders they place in the system, it's sad really. To top that, as if that wasn't the pinnacle issue at hand, we have Certified Nursing Assistants that do nothing but hide when needed or take their breaks right at the point when the patients and nurses need them the most. You would think that this is an issue that the management could resolve, but since the CNA's have a great union, they get away with everything and still get paid for just hanging around chatting on their cell phones and eating left over meal trays that the patients don't want to eat. I've been at Lenox Hill for a very long time now and prior to arriving there, I was offered a position at Mount Sinai, but due to all the propaganda that you would hear around the world of hospitals of how Lenox Hill is top notch and how great a Park Avenue hospital is, I took the job at Lenox Hill instead. Little did I know how much of a letdown it truly was.

Well, the way it works at Lenox is that they just don't shut down the entire hospital, but instead start off by shutting down units. You will first see one unit shut down from one day to the other and then, a few months later, another unit will be forced to shut down, followed by another unit a few months later. The reason why not too many nurses come in the open and talk about it is because instead of just laying them off, the way most hospitals would, the hospital places them into a floating pool, where they essentially have to just show up day-to-day and hope that there is a floor/unit in need. Worse case scenario, if there is not a need for them, the hospital then pushes them to use up a vacation day or even a sick day. If someone were to use up all of their sick days, they will just not get paid and have to wait for the patient census to grow again in order to have some work. After a few months, if they are lucky and financially stable, they will begin to reopen units and allow for the floaters to reintegrate themselves into their old units. This process is perpetual and due to the time and effort these poor nurses have to put into just making ends meet, they probably never get around to talking about it to other nurses or even mentioning it on some broader medium the likes of this forum. It's sad really, what's worse is that we have a useless union that only sits around collecting dues and doing nothing for their nurses.

They always send out someone to open up a stand/table at those job fairs, but it's really to save face and to make other hospitals believe that they are still in the running. Truth of the matter is that they are in a financial rut and are in serious need or reorganization. The management has been terrible over the last 5 years or so and people have slowly stopped going to Lenox Hill and have instead opted for the "better" counterpart Cornell Presbyterian. I don't know what to do..

The rumors might very well be true. I work at Lenox Hill on 3 Wollman and they just closed my unit 2 days ago. I showed up to work my regular night shift and found my entire unit empty with no patients, medcarts or anything and had to report to another floor as a float. To think, I let go of a job offer at Sloan Kettering to work at a fancy Park Avenue hospital only to find myself floating around with my personals in hand trying to fend on another unit. I cried the entire night..

BUMP for response potential..

Anyone?? If you have some info, feel free to PM me as well! Thanks in advance,