UPMC Western Psy?

NurseyBaby'05, BSN, RN · May 2, 2006

I had some of my clinicals there. I really liked it. The nice thing is that they have some of it divided. It's an advantage of its size. Most of the schizophrenic patients are kept on the same floor. It keeps the people in there who would prey on their fears/paranioa separated from them. A smaller facility is not able to afford them this advantage. The other thing I liked about it was the system they have in place with the safety officers. A lot of them are big, young guys. It's not the 20 years retired feeble ex-cop supplementing his pension. I'm not trying to be prejudicial and to stereotype, but I am trying to get a point across. When there was a problem they were called up while it was still verbal. They would just come up and be like "Hey, what's going on?" and often it would nip any trouble in the bud before anything became physical.

As for the union, it's in place in certain areas of the hospital. The supervisors and the nurses who work in the DEC (ED) are non-union. The regular staff nurses are union. How effective is the union? I can't really say. I didn't spend enough time there to tell. Some of the union hospitals in the area have an effective union presence and other facilities with the same union are just awful. I remember staff being mandated when I was there, but things may not be like that anymore. I would look into it.

alexnextlevel · May 4, 2006

Thanks for the info!

janster58 · Dec 27, 2006

No union at UPMC!

ChristineN, BSN, RN · Dec 27, 2006

No union at UPMC!

Actually, that's not entirely true. Some UPMC hospitals do have nurses unions, although the majority of UPMC hospitals don't. WPIC and Southside are two such unionized hospitals.

janster58 · Dec 27, 2006

I guess I wasn't there long enough to discover this. Magee offerend me 120 PTO hours in advance to lure me there. Unfortunately I took the bait. Then found out that staff there are not allowed to use PTO. Great benefit wasn't it?

Well they ended up paying me over 13k for orientation. I resigned the following week. Would have been so much cheaper to just let staff use PTO. Instead of constantly hiring people that won't stay. I've gotten very used to being able to take time off. My family is spread out over the country, and I need more than 2 weeks (not at the same time) to see them at least once a yr.

K98 · Dec 27, 2006

UPMC... The Dark Side... Word is that the SEIU is going to try to organize the nurses at Presby next. This should be good :)