Physician Office Assistant (aka POA role) - Physician Office Assistant Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Employee Review

I started with the "cons" list because it was honestly very hard for me to think of "pros" for this role at MSK. First of all, this role has a HIGH turnover rate. Of the cohort that I came in with at my department, I've seen more than half quit before a year was even up. Even when I first stated in the department, the employees at the time had told us that we were hired to replace the former employees who had quit. It should've been a huge red flag for me at the time but I don't think I understood the severity of high turnover rates and how that directly indicates poor management and poor work environment and culture. Also, let me be clear - most people are NOT fired from this role. Most people QUIT voluntarily because it is that bad. That's why you'll see MSK recruiting for this role all the time. This position is not as advertised. As of March 2018, they increased the average salary for a Physician Office Assistant from $43,000 to $48,000 to adjust for market inflation. If you look at a quick review on Glassdoors, the typical Physician Office Assistant in NYC salary is way above that (around $59,000; with a moderate rate closer to $51,000). Now, the reason I'm mentioning this is because I want to let you know what you'd be paid for so that you can consider if this is worth your time. In this role, you are expected to be the office manager for the doctor or clinician that you work for and you are not even remotely compensated for it. You will be overworked with having to cover multiple offices at once and even though they say overtime is not expected, you'll find yourself putting in a lot of overtime hours just so you're not drowning in work the next day. While the doctors you'll work for are sympathetic that you are often inundated with work, they only care about whether the work is done. You will work for a doctor but you will be managed by a supervisor in the administration of the hospital for your department. Most of the time your supervisor will not understand your workload and even if you explained to them the high volume, they won't understand or believe you. I've been asked in these situations how I can change my own working style/"work flow" instead of being offered help/support by administration. I've worked in 3 different services during my time here and I can tell you that the majority of the services at MSK are very very busy with minimal support staff - which means a lot of the work will fall on you. You can expect to talk to 60+ different patients daily, along with answering voicemails, online patient messages, and processing other documents related to smooth office functioning. In addition, you will be asked to act as the administrative secretary for the doctor you're working for - which means planning domestic/international air travel/hotel, planning meetings, submitting for reimbursement & travel authorizations, and renewing licenses to medical associations (pretty much also acting as a personal assistant). They are NOT flexible with time off requests. So, if you want a work-life balance, have a family or are going to school, this is NOT the job for you. MSK has a customer service initiative to their patients that if they call during business hours (9am - 5pm), the patient will be able to get in contact with a live person (usually YOU) and if they leave a voicemail, the office will call them back same-day. This would make sense if each doctor had a staff to work on triaging patient's messages but they don't. Instead, they have 1 or 2 Physician Office Assistants working for them and consistently triaging phone calls/messages throughout the day. As a result, if you want to take time off for a doctor's visit/family event/emergency, you have to find someone in your service to answer your phonecalls/messages for you. Management does not help with this coverage and will ask you first to find someone to cover you and if you can't, then they will reach out to someone. The problem with this is that most of your co-workers are very busy and they simply cannot take on someone's workload, and this creates strife among employees. There is a workplace culture of blaming and pointing fingers. There were often situations when something was missed for a patient and instead of working together to solve the problem, you'll find that your teammates (your nurse and session assistant mostly) will want to make themselves look good for the doctor and as a result, throw you under the bus. You have to understand that with this role, you are constantly working together with a team (a doctor, nurse(s) and a session assistant from clinic) and you're work is interdependent. So, to me it doesn't make sense why the culture is not more geared toward an outlook of "let's learn from each other so that we can work better together" and more towards "this person made a mistake, let's highlight that and also not explain what went wrong." This alluring aspect of MSK is that it "looks good" on paper, their resume is pristine. It is a "prestigious" hospital in NYC and internationally too, with good benefits and opportunities to move up ...or so it seems. But in reality, there are a lot of honest, hardworking people at this hospital who are being overworked, not rewarded/compensated appropriately and not developed. This role is an entry level role and yet, I've seen some people in this role (although it is very rare) that have been here for 10 -15 years because they believe in MSK and yet they haven't moved up anywhere...that's not right. Why aren't employees that have been with MSK in this role groomed for leadership roles when they are the "eyes" and "ears" of the hospital - literally the frontline men and women? Instead, they're often ignored and not taken seriously. Which brings me to my last point, you are not respected in this work at MSK. People in other roles and departments assume you are not intelligent...I've heard people refer to it as the "lowly POA" role. You have low status and no respect.