Pros
The hospital was close to my house, so I didn’t have to commute, the number one reason I worked at that particular facility (I’m retired now). But that’s a personal reason. A more objective reason, very compelling, was the great camaraderie among ER staff (the ones in the trenches actually doing the work, so I’m excluding the many layers of management). The ER doctors almost to the person were terrific about being open to suggestions about how to improve patient care and treated staff members well.
Cons
Forget about raises. There was always “we’re too poor” to justify keeping employees the most poorly paid in the valley—which is why new RNs routinely left for Sacramento or Roseville hospitals after getting a year or two of experience. Also forget about adequate security. There was a lot of workplace violence in the ER, and management’s response was still to blame employees rather than hold violent patients responsible, because nothing was more important than those patient satisfaction surveys. (If there was a foolproof de-escalation technique that guaranteed to work in all situations, then I wish the hospital taught it to staff, because staff tried their best and still met with violence every shift.)