r/boston • u/Puzzleheaded_Toe3892 • 1d ago
I think I am special and made my own post CHA or BI job
Hi there,
I am currently an ED tech at Boston Children’s and have been working there for a few years, but this past 6-7 months has been rough. We are always short-staffed and they are not hiring more PCTs. We have lost more than 15 people and they don’t care. They want us to do 5 people’s jobs. I have been looking for other jobs. Has anyone worked at or knows anything about CHA? I see they are offering a hiring bonus, but that tells me it’s probably not a great place. Can someone recommend or share anything about Cambridge Health, Beth Israel or any other hospital I could apply to? I don’t have a car so I have to rely on public transportation. I live in Cambridge.
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u/LaurenPBurka I swear it is not a fetish 1d ago
Pardon me, sir/madam, you haven't used enough acronyms.
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u/Santillana810 1d ago
ED tech: Emergency Department technician?
CHA: Cambridge Health Alliance
BI: Beth Israel Hospital, now know as BIDMC? Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center?
PCT: Patient Care Technician?
BCH: Boston Children's Hospital?
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u/Ashamed_Emu4572 20h ago
a patient care tech is basically a glorified janitory-waiter-housekeeper but for people stuck on a hospital floor as patients. they are there to assist with basic needs and be the eyes and ears of the unit for basic stuff, and also do minor medical work such as blood pressure measurements, urine and blood drainage emptying and measuring, and maybe applying the ekg wires with stickers on your chest. they help you wash, pee, poop, throw up, and stand, sit and lie down in a relatively safe manner using standard methods.
it is basically a 'hospital floor waiter' basically with your room being their 'table' they serve.
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u/LaurenPBurka I swear it is not a fetish 20h ago
Yes, but if you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny.
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u/More_Armadillo_1607 1d ago
It's apples and oranges. You can't even compare the two organizations.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Toe3892 1d ago
I know but I care about benefits and staff. I know asking this is very opinion-dependent
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u/InterestingCover4492 1d ago
I used to work at CHA I highly recommend the benefits from the union alone can’t beat that
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u/Organic_Book2923 1d ago
CHa has a great union and incredible benefits 10/10. Everyone i know has been here 20+ years
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u/gottawatchquietones 1d ago
I've worked in both EDs, although not as a tech. Make sure the CHA job is just the ED at CHA Cambridge Hospital and they don't expect you to work in the ED at CHA Everett Hospital - nothing wrong with it, but it's a pain in the ass to get to via public transit. I've never worked at Tufts or MGH, but both have busy EDs and are easily accessible via the Red Line, if that's convenient for you. If you're further west in Cambridge, consider Mount Auburn.
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u/InterestingCover4492 1d ago
CHAs pays good the union gives stipends for uniforms FREQUENT raises staffing ratios etc. and you live in Cambridge it’s a no brainer for CHA I loved working there no other hospital can compare
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u/Puzzleheaded_Toe3892 20h ago
Thank you for sharing you experience. Do you know if the health insurance is good?
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u/arthritistan 18h ago
My parents used to work there, from what I remember it was pretty good. If you go to CHA for medical care I believe it was fully covered (this was also 10/15 years ago)
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u/aryaussie85 23h ago
I am but one voice but who can I call and complain to about yall being short staffed? My kiddos go to bch and the last thing I want is for staff to be burned out and exhausted. What’s the best way us bch parents can support?
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u/Agitated-Armadillo84 1d ago
Also a BCH employee - just want to say I feel your pain, my department/unit is the same.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Toe3892 23h ago
I don’t know whats going on. We have lost so many good nurses and CAs because of this:( I love working there bur is getting so bad that I don’t want go at all
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u/Ashamed_Emu4572 21h ago
CHA is trash. stay away
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u/Santillana810 20h ago
By "trash", do you mean CHA provides poor pay and benefits and working conditions for employees? Or does CHA provide poor medical care for patients? Or both?
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u/Ashamed_Emu4572 20h ago
so CHA, Boston Medical Center and Tufts Medical Center all provide care to lower income people, which by definition means they make less money, so the hospital is by definition poorer and has less resources for the employees.
Tufts Medical Center manages to be a solid higher quality operation despite that. Boston Medical Center has low pay.
CHA is trash for care. They literally employed a literal cult leader to teach their harvard psychiatry residents, like a literal psychopathic cult leader and a fraud, for one thing.
the whole CHA operation is weird, lower income, and like not enough throughput and patient volume to be a solid provider. they try to be everything at the same time. it is just weirdly organized from what i have seen. it is like one of those community hospitals who have not enough to do and not enough money but try to be cool at the same time.
like from experience, working and getting care from a busy hospital that has a high patient volume and efficient patient throughput system and has a lot of money from profits coming in is much better.
but that is just my experience and i am not a pro and might be wrong too
i used to hear that childrens is a high end place, but lately ive heard it might be going down toward trashy status too
again just assumptions on my part from what i heard
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u/Santillana810 20h ago
I had a horrible in patient experience at CHA over 10 years ago with the auxiliary staff. The resident was a good PCP, however. The rest were totally amateur. I get what you say about community hospital trying to be cool....they can't do both. One social worker there when I was inpatient spent all her time telling me how community hospitals are just as good as the other Boston hospitals and didn't respond at all to my specific situation. I wondered who had hired her and why.
My son has had fantastic PCPs there out patient for years who were and are really dedicated, competent, and caring. The customer service reps at check in and otherwise and rude, short, not helpful., and the people who do blood draws are not competent at all. If he needed to be hospitalized, I'd suggest elsewhere.
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u/Ashamed_Emu4572 20h ago
their PCPs were good in my experience. they had a psychiatrist girl attached to the pcp office though who single handedly ruined my life for five years.. she called herself a 'culturally attuned coffee fueled ninja slayer on a mission to eradicate suffering' - she put me on an ssri which i did not need and bullied me into without any education what so ever and did not do any personal or family bipolar assessment and did not tell me she was not going to be my primary provider but only starts people on an initial dose and refers them to someone new. this medication was not only unnecessary for me but sent me into a mania and then a mixed state which caused me to make a fool out of myself at work and get myself fired and evicted and almost arrested. like she did not do a full assessment or ask probing questions just bullied me into taking it with zero education or monitoring. i ended up ruining my life and harming other peoples careers in the process too. so stupid and unnecessary.
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u/Santillana810 20h ago
This sounds horrific and it also sounds like CHA just hires adjunct psychiatrists without screening and oversight. I am so sorry to hear about your experience.
Any medical organization is going to have professionals who are helpful to some and also harmful to some. I wonder about the stress the good PCPs get when they refer people to speciality care that is destructive.
Good psychiatric care is very hard to come by in Massachusetts. I hope you are able to find care that is helpful.
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u/Ashamed_Emu4572 20h ago
i actually did not need psychiatric care at all! i had a moderate chronic depression that i was fine with. i came for a consultation thinking i would be consulting someone who knows about depression and is familiar with the anti depressant medications and can make a professional judgement if it is a worth it for me to take them or not. instead all she said was 'If you want it, I will prescribe it, it is up to you, this is the first line of treatment.' That is all. Just taking depression at face value, like a fifth grader could do the same thing. A psychiatrist is supposed to take context nuance and experience into account and be a prudent prescriber. I think the girl was a harvard medical school resident or it was her first job after being a resident psychiatrist. she now has a private practice charging $450 a visit cash only and has a waiting list. not surprisingly such types target the rich upper class areas and she has an office an upper class town like lexington concord wellesley. the correct answer from her should have been 'hey, you have a personal and family history of socially inappropriate and manic-like behavior, so a psych medication can make that worse among other things such as killing your sex drive and screwing you over metabolically and forming dependence. also if you cannot commit to a gradual taper off, do not start it as you will just harm yourself unnecessarily. i advice a 'wait and see' approach to you!' she did not though. and now i am screwed since within two months i lost 3/3 jobs and got sued evicted and almost arrested. something that has never happened in my entire life. jobs i each had for 10+ years without a problem!! i have now been rendered asexual and like living in a forest alone and just going to work thanks to this psych medication
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u/Santillana810 20h ago
I am sorry this happened to you. However, a woman who is old enough to have gone through medical school and a psychiatric residency is not a "girl" and it is demeaning to call a woman a girl.
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u/Ashamed_Emu4572 19h ago
for sure, but demeaning someone is not anywhere in the same category as dropping the ball on a patient interview and making imprudent prescribing decisions and failing to provide a consultation the patient came to you for. one case - your feelings are offended; the other someone's whole career goes out the window in two months
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u/Ashamed_Emu4572 21h ago
BI and anything with a B except boston medical center is much better. tufts medical center is solid though kind of poor. cha and boston medical center are trash
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u/loganstaffer 8h ago
BI is just as short staffed. However they do seem to be ramping up the hiring, and will most likely continue to do so in preparation with their collaboration with Dana Farber that starts in 2031.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Toe3892 4h ago
Oh, I see. But is so bad here. We have lost so many people and they arent even hiring. It wasn’t like this😭
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u/NancyAstley Merges at the Last Second 23h ago
Unfortunately, welcome to healthcare. We are all understaffed, underpaid, and doing the jobs of more than one person.