Fear-based culture, inhumane attendance policy, and unsafe staffing - Proceed with caution - Clinic Registered Nurse Swedish Employee Review

1.0
Jul 16, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The front line team members and physicians are great to work with. Great for a 20 something with no life responsibilities.

Cons

Swedish talks a big game about equity and patient care, but behind the scenes the culture is fear-based, rigid, and often unsafe - especially for staff with real-world responsibilities outside of work. The attendance policy allows for only 5 unplanned absences or tardies PER YEAR. including sick days, child care issues, family emergencies, or traffic delays. That means you're expected to be 98% perfect across 250 full time work days or face disciplinary action. (the number doesn't change if you work less than 5 days per week). There is no flexibility, no compassion, and no room for life to happen. Meanwhile, salaried leadership freely works from home, comes in late, and leaves early without consequence. My leader spends most of the day chit chatting with staff stopping them from doing work they are later spoken to about not getting done. The double standard is blatant. Leadership at Swedish is largely non-clinical, with little to no understanding of the roles they oversee. Policies are regularly made without clinical insight which not only disrespects those on the ground - it directly puts patients at risk. This isn't just bad leadership, its dangerous. Swedish also routinely fails to meet safe staffing levels even when union contracts require it. I was the only nurse on staff for a busy clinic for a day, something that leadership was fully aware of in advance yet took no steps to mitigate. They all went on vacation and left me to run the entire clinic alone. I had no guidance on what to do if something went wrong. I had to stay late to clean up the mess, and ended up being late to pick up my child from child care - which cost me in late fees. And they wonder why people burn out. This isn't an isolated case. Swedish has a pattern of disregard for labor protections as well - There are several labor law suits open and recent. If you're someone with a family, a disability, a second job, a dog, or any other responsibilities outside of work and need to commute to work in a manner other than jet pack, be careful. Swedish's public mission says "equity" but the internal culture says control, punishment, and top down decisions made by people who in some cases never went to college. Ask the hard questions before you accept an offer.

Explore other reviews about Swedish

5.0
Jul 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company offered great flexibility- great manager

Cons

The floor I worked on was understaffed

2.0
Jul 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The perks/benefit working for this company is that first of all, they do their absolute best to uphold their culture or standards, to make sure that both patients and employees are being treated equally. Secondly, depending on what you do and in what department you are in, you will absolutely feel like the day is dragging by and just want to get out of there. But with the work environment I experienced, the coworkers I had were very social and had lots of great laughs. As far as training goes, when switching from one department to the other, the training was decent from one department lead not giving me much at all to work with and then putting me onto the floor right away, to somebody in the specialty department, who was very thorough and took time to teach you what you needed to learn.

Cons

As far as my experience with the downside of Swedish, I would say is management and the typical days at work. Management had their good sides to where I became great friends and close to a couple of managers, to the down side of where I had really bad issues with them. The major red flag for me was the micromanaging and screwing with my PTO requests. With my PTO requests, my previous clinical supervisor would approve the request, especially when it was a month out and I would get the email notifications telling me that it has been approved by that clinical supervisor. The huge issue when I was on vacation for couple of weeks, the supervisor told me that I did not have enough PTO for the second week and that it would be marked as unpaid time off. I did not have an issue with that until he/she called me the next day stating why I did not go to work and would be marked as a “no-call, no-show.” I was very confused until the supervisor told me that he/she did not approve my PTO request for that second week, only for the first. This was where I got frustrated and showed that it was approved by the supervisor and he/she stated that it was still in a “pending approval status,” and I have never heard of that the entire time I have been with this company. After everything, I got in trouble for no reason and was written up as my second write-up, not even a verbal warning, per policy. In the end, the main point from all of this in my experience, is that Swedish as a whole has been pretty good to me when it came to meeting new coworkers, having that fun & social environment and decent training (depending on the department). The other half of the company needing to improve on management needing to focus on more important things generally and not messing around with people’s PTO or time off when it has already been approved.

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