Pros and Cons of Working for Hospital for Sick Children

[mamaonamission]

Although I am a few years away, my end goal of my nursing career was to work at the Hospital for Sick Children (HSC) in Toronto. It seems, based on their website, to be a very progressive, rewarding place to work if you enjoy any pediatric areas of nursing.

I work part-time as a Ward Clerk in a teaching hospital, and overheard a student nurse talking about her desire to work at HSC when she graduates. She was asking our floor nurses if she should be concerned that Sick Kids is not unionized. Non of the nurses she was talking with seemed that enthused about being a nurse at HSC and both the student nurse and I couldn't understand why. They would not really give an answer, except one nurse said that there was a high turn over of nurses at HSC.

Would anyone who has any insight into working at HSC be so kind as to share their opinions?

[mamaonamission]

Peds isn't for everyone, that's for sure. I know I could not work with the elderly. That's not to say that I don't love elderly people, because I have the greatest affection and respect for them. I just can't nurse them. My hat is off to those who work in long-term care; their job is just as difficult as mine and receives about as much respect from the powers that be. In peds, if you don't work with neonates or oncology patients, you're invisible.

Could you elaborate on that, Pedi-Gree? I know there are unspoken nuances of how the different areas of nursing are viewed, and am curious as to why ped nurses would not be given their due?

[Pedi-Gree, BSN, RN]

In every hospital I've ever worked at, there have been obvious differences in how money is doled out, for example. When the PICU of one hospital desperately needed an assortment of equipment, and NICU wanted new monitors, NICU got their monitors and PICU was told to come back next year. When the local children's hospital foundation handed out the money they raised using stories about children who had survived critical illness, the PICU was never even mentioned in most of the stories and mostly the credit was (is) given to the doctors. Thousands of foundation dollars were spent on PlayStations, DVD players, DVDs, toys and other niceties, while PICU got two battery-operated clocks. A local radio station does an annual fundraising radiothon for the foundation and every other year they do one for the oncology ward. Kids with cancer and sick newborns tug at the heart strings and are made more visible to the public than older children who might have spent months in hospital with metablic disorders, traumatic injuries, recovering from transplants, complications from disabilities and so on. And of course, research money is poured into neonatology and oncology by the bucketful. Not much pediatric reserach is funded at even close to those levels and there's certainly no big fanfare.

Perfect example: I have the TV on and when I heard the name of our local Children's Hospital my ears perked up. Oh wait, they're talking about a program for educating parents in NICU. :grn:

[linzz]

Thanks for speaking out Pedi-Gree, you are have made some interesting points. Patients don't see the equipment shortages, they just see that there are lots of toys on the unit and isn't that nice. What they don't see is the nurse scrambling around looking for supplies.