As someone who worked as a provider in a Level 3/4 NICU and worked trauma at THE trauma center for an entire State, I have to disagree with you.
In my experience, healthcare is spurts of (sometimes intense) stress followed by lots of busy with some not so busy thrown in. Very rarely are you under intense stress for your 8-12 hours shift (barring a weekend working the ER).
I had far more downtime as a health care provider than as an IT professional.
Much of that is down to management. Hospital Admins/Nurse Mgrs can try to do more with less, but physically a nurse can only do so much per shift, a respiratory therapist can only do so much per shift. A health care provider is NOT seen as a money sink.
In many IT enterprise level positions and IT health positions, you are seen as a money liability to the company/hospital. Managers keep piling more and more on you until you have to work 10-12 hours per day to just keep up.
I spent 5 years supporting EHR's (sunrise/epic) at a large, teaching hospital and I was one of the people responsible for keeping the system up 24x7x365. If I programmed a drug calculation wrong, multiple people could be harmed/die and the hospital was on the hook for millions in damages. If the new version of Citrix was flaky and was sending printouts from the EHR to random printers anywhere in the hospital, I was one of the people who had hospital administration breathing down their neck and reminding us that WE were the reason the hospital could have a HIPAA violation of a few million dollars. Meanwhile, the health care staff and admin would often be heard complaining that us IT people made decent money and only scheduled for 8 hour shifts and can't we make cuts in IT so we can hire more nurses?
As a provider, I had responsibility for a few sick patients for a limited time (8-16 hours).
As an IT person I have responsibility for every piece of equipment in the business/hospital, every piece of software the business/hospital uses and some that vendor use, every user, every customer (patient) and the security/reputation of the business/hospital. Management is also very quick to tell us that as we are salaried, our responsibility is 24x7x365 and nope, you won't get paid for any overtime you work (unlike more nurses and other health care staff).
As a provider, I could go home after a shift and know that my relief was there taking care of my patients. In IT, I go home after work and know that there is no relief working on the issue, that I arrive in the morning management will be asking why the issue isn't fixed yet and a response of we are understaffed/overworked is not a valid excuse, that I am expected to fix the problem in a timely manner, still get my other assignments done on time/under budget and somehow be responsible for making sure that I am working on future problems before they are even identified.
But, I no longer feel like I have to sit in a rocking chair, rocking a baby (if the parents are not there) as it takes its last breath, just so the baby can have some human contact before death.
My IT manager at a local hospital was the worst manager that I have had in 30 years of work.
She was hired to try and increase the number of female managers in the hospitals IT department. She had NO IT experience.
She was a Major in the National Guard, so we were all treated like idiot privates.
I was given a task to rewrite some code that calculates drug dosages based on a large number of factors. Manager said this should only take a day or so. I told her it would take 6-8 days. Day 3 and the manager is livid that I had not met her timeline and was making her look bad. Day 6 and she wrote me up because I insisted on having our pharmacist test my code. Day 8 and she writes me again and writes up the pharmacist because we were 'not doing our work correctly' and we were making her look bad. Oh, and testing is not needed if you know what you are doing, so I was to move my code from DEV to PROD immediately. I refused.
Day 12 and the pharmacy management team for the entire hospital is banging on the new CTO's door in support of the pharmacist and myself.
Day 12 my manager can no longer write up anyone without direct CTO involvement due to this issue and many others. But, the manager will be retained because of political reasons (hard to fire a female, gay, military vet).
For the next 5 years, this manager and I fought about timelines, testing and IT practices and procedures.
In the end, I quit.
Months later, I get a call from my former manager letting me know that she had changed my exit status to 'do not rehire' from 'ok to rehire'. Tried to fight, but the hospital has access to more and better lawyers than I can hire.
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As someone who worked as a provider in a Level 3/4 NICU and worked trauma at THE trauma center for an entire State, I have to disagree with you.
In my experience, healthcare is spurts of (sometimes intense) stress followed by lots of busy with some not so busy thrown in. Very rarely are you under intense stress for your 8-12 hours shift (barring a weekend working the ER).
I had far more downtime as a health care provider than as an IT professional.
Much of that is down to management. Hospital Admins/Nurse Mgrs can try to do more with less, but physically a nurse can only do so much per shift, a respiratory therapist can only do so much per shift. A health care provider is NOT seen as a money sink.
In many IT enterprise level positions and IT health positions, you are seen as a money liability to the company/hospital. Managers keep piling more and more on you until you have to work 10-12 hours per day to just keep up.
I spent 5 years supporting EHR's (sunrise/epic) at a large, teaching hospital and I was one of the people responsible for keeping the system up 24x7x365. If I programmed a drug calculation wrong, multiple people could be harmed/die and the hospital was on the hook for millions in damages. If the new version of Citrix was flaky and was sending printouts from the EHR to random printers anywhere in the hospital, I was one of the people who had hospital administration breathing down their neck and reminding us that WE were the reason the hospital could have a HIPAA violation of a few million dollars. Meanwhile, the health care staff and admin would often be heard complaining that us IT people made decent money and only scheduled for 8 hour shifts and can't we make cuts in IT so we can hire more nurses?
As a provider, I had responsibility for a few sick patients for a limited time (8-16 hours).
As an IT person I have responsibility for every piece of equipment in the business/hospital, every piece of software the business/hospital uses and some that vendor use, every user, every customer (patient) and the security/reputation of the business/hospital. Management is also very quick to tell us that as we are salaried, our responsibility is 24x7x365 and nope, you won't get paid for any overtime you work (unlike more nurses and other health care staff).
As a provider, I could go home after a shift and know that my relief was there taking care of my patients. In IT, I go home after work and know that there is no relief working on the issue, that I arrive in the morning management will be asking why the issue isn't fixed yet and a response of we are understaffed/overworked is not a valid excuse, that I am expected to fix the problem in a timely manner, still get my other assignments done on time/under budget and somehow be responsible for making sure that I am working on future problems before they are even identified.
But, I no longer feel like I have to sit in a rocking chair, rocking a baby (if the parents are not there) as it takes its last breath, just so the baby can have some human contact before death.
My IT manager at a local hospital was the worst manager that I have had in 30 years of work.
She was hired to try and increase the number of female managers in the hospitals IT department. She had NO IT experience.
She was a Major in the National Guard, so we were all treated like idiot privates.
I was given a task to rewrite some code that calculates drug dosages based on a large number of factors. Manager said this should only take a day or so. I told her it would take 6-8 days.
Day 3 and the manager is livid that I had not met her timeline and was making her look bad.
Day 6 and she wrote me up because I insisted on having our pharmacist test my code.
Day 8 and she writes me again and writes up the pharmacist because we were 'not doing our work correctly' and we were making her look bad. Oh, and testing is not needed if you know what you are doing, so I was to move my code from DEV to PROD immediately. I refused.
Day 12 and the pharmacy management team for the entire hospital is banging on the new CTO's door in support of the pharmacist and myself.
Day 12 my manager can no longer write up anyone without direct CTO involvement due to this issue and many others. But, the manager will be retained because of political reasons (hard to fire a female, gay, military vet).
For the next 5 years, this manager and I fought about timelines, testing and IT practices and procedures.
In the end, I quit.
Months later, I get a call from my former manager letting me know that she had changed my exit status to 'do not rehire' from 'ok to rehire'. Tried to fight, but the hospital has access to more and better lawyers than I can hire.
Wonder how much the university spends on football every year (including coach's salaries, stadium and all associated costs)?
Could that money be put to better use?