Saturday, July 2, 2011

Hospital Orientation: the great equalizer

This week I started at a new job, so I got to experience the joy that is hospital orientation.

Personally, I feel that all hospital orientations are the same. This time, I sat next to a surgeon who has been to orientation more times than he can count. Although I've only been to a couple different places, I think I might have figured out the general strategy. All orientations seem to contain the following components:

1. HR people who tell you that their hospital is the best possible place to work.
-First, they'll show you all of the different awards that they've won that
you've never actually heard of.
-Then, they'll tell you that you're part of a family and all so important and
valued.
-They will give you paperwork and pictures of hospital employees smiling which
you are supposed to keep and refer to, but later this paperwork will be shoved
in the back of your car and forgotten. They will also give you a stress ball,
button, chip clip, or other freebie for you to shove in your junk drawer.

2. "Get to know you games"
-Next, they will go around the room and ask what you are doing and claim that
you will become close friends. It doesn't matter that
you're sitting next to the new EVS worker who will work thirds on every fourth
Arbor Day. You are now best friends.
-Next, you will have to explain to everyone around you what you're actually
doing even though at this point you may have no idea. Regardless, the people
next to you will ask really dumb questions about your new occupation. The
hospital has gone to the farthest lengths to make sure that the people next to
you have no idea why a pharmacist, nurse, or resident would ever be employed
by your institution.

3. Benefits
-Next, they'll tell you about your benefits in the most generic way possible
and talk again about why it's so great to work at your hospital. They'll
probably emphasize that there is a group of women who like to ride on a bus
for spa treatments in Tahiti for a very very low price. They will not explain
anything important to you (when do we get paid? how do we take vacation?), but
instead they will talk about how good the hot dogs are at the employee
baseball game (NOTE: the employee baseball game will always occur on your
weekend).

4. Lunch
-The lunch will be catered in from the cafeteria, and it will be quite good.
However, it will not resemble anything close to what the cafeteria actually
serves (if you do eventually have the ability to purchase it on a random
Tuesday, it will be at least 12 dollars). The HR team will boast that they
have reasonable prices and a large selection.

5. JCAHO Competencies
-Now, you will sit for four hours while they complete the JCAHO competencies.
They will forget to include something important (for example, it would be nice
to tell the new pastoral care team what "contact precautions" actually means).
The first time hospital employees will listen intently. Everyone else will
text underneath the table.

What are your experiences with orientations? Anything else to add?

1 comment:

  1. I came by from Grand Rounds at Fizzy's place. I love this post. I am an educator/IT geek at a hospital but right out of college, I was the New Employee Orientation coordinator. I was a cute, 23 year old and I was SO excited about having a real job. All of your post is true. In the ten years since I coordinated orientation, we've moved most of it to computer based training so there's only a small amount of sitting and listening but still...it's pretty awful. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that your post is right on, and I should know. I was at every single orientation at my hospital for over two years. Yikes!

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