Pros
- I had a great team of social workers, who were always willing to help.
- my direct supervisor was a huge advocate for the Med SW team across IHA. She helped in getting us get more FTE, and didn’t micro-manage at all.
- my coworkers at my office location (nurses, reception, doctors, etc) all appreciated my role as a social worker.
- working at an outpatient office, I had good work/life balance. Mon - fri schedule, no holidays or on-call hours.
- good health insurance, BCBS PPO.
- my coworkers and the schedule are truly why I give this job a 4/5 instead of a 2/5.
Kontras
- Our referral count/work load far exceeded the FTE we were given. For example, one of my clinics only had FTE for a social worker one day a week. Meaning, I should have only had up to 12 or so patients on my case load at any given time. More often than not, I had between 40-60 patients on my case load from this one clinic.
- The head of behavioral health is a person with no mental health degree or experience. This role truly should be occupied by someone who’s an LMSW, LPC, LMFT, or any other mental health discipline. She’s not, she’s a nurse. This is not a dig at nursing, as I don’t think a Social Worker is capable of being in charge of a nursing team either. The head of behavioral health is making decisions for the division without actually consulting the people who do the work. A lot of people in the division have already quit, and I know of more who are actively looking for other work.
- the pay is very low, not just for the industry standard but for the amount of work we do. I work at a different healthcare organization now doing pretty much the same role and my pay differential is almost 20K higher.
- low trust in leadership across multiple disciplines (nursing, reception, etc).
- No room for growth in this particular role.