Pros
Opportunity to help the most vulnerable animals in many different ways from emergency triage to x-rays to wound cares to surgeries to putting pets up for adoption. I also specifically worked with some talented and passionate coworkers who made the job fun, especially in the moments when it got tough.
Cons
The trauma hospital is run by rude, lazy, and condescending management who would rather spend their time in their office laughing and gossiping or walking around the building pretending to do something else to avoid helping their team. The team is assigned tasks for the day and everyone tries their best to complete those tasks by the end of the day. When it comes to intaking animals from field, things can get hectic fast, especially since lack of staff is a constant issue. Management becomes overwhelmed and doesn't want to deal with the chaos so they pull other people (who weren't assigned to traumas) from their lists to help the trauma technicians. While we are all willing to help our teammates, this becomes incredibly annoying, and mentally and physically draining after a while, and the other lists don't get completed, leaving animals waiting longer for other services they need, especially when leadership just kicks back and ignores the hospital falling apart. And then leadership has the nerve to pull us aside and scold us for not completing our lists, belittle us and make us feel like terrible technicians for making mistakes, and penalize us for staying overtime because we helped our team complete closing duties and relieve each other's workload. They do this, and yet find it so fitting to leave exactly on time amidst the chaos, leaving the team and the hospital in shambles because they have a life at home, as if everyone else doesn't. In addition, favoritism is a plague that runs rampant through the trauma hospital. Leadership picks their favorites based on personal relationships outside of work, using the excuse that "they've been with the organization longer" and prioritizes their training and schooling opportunities, throwing seniority and technicians who are actually skilled, at the back of the line. While the favorites get to train and explore more advanced tasks in the trauma hospital, like working with sedated patients, the rest of the technicians are forgotten and stuck doing the same rotation of tasks every week, not learning, not advancing, suffering from compassion fatigue and burn out. This is also very concerning because they will allow these favorited technicians with little skill, little training, and little experience in the field in general, to handle advanced procedures on their own so quickly, putting the lives of animals at risk, which is NOT humane. Even if we go to leadership to express our concerns and desire to advance, we are given empty promises that are never fulfilled, or we are given one day of "training" and then never considered again. Hearing first hand from another technician that "kissing up to leadership is the only way to move up" is very disappointing but unfortunately, they're right, and more good technicians will continue to be forgotten and not advance in their career, while the ones that are just here for a paycheck with zero care for the animals get promoted, receive raises, and receive special praise and treatment from leadership. Leadership is also given the ok from each other and from higher up to leave whenever they want or not show up to work whenever they want just because they want to spend time with their family, yet if other technicians ask to leave early for personal reasons or if they call out of work for personal reasons varying from feeling under the weather to just wanting comfort and time with their own families or pets, they are penalized, written up, and threatened to be fired because they are "unreliable". Unfortunately these issues are not something we can bring up to higher ups above the trauma hospital leadership, because they too have their favorites among leadership and technicians and fiercely defend them as well as their own positions. You are cornered, made to feel like a terrible person and horrible at your job, they will also pry into your personal life, or have other coworkers do it for them, bringing up personal things that have nothing to do with work, into conversations and use it against you in any way they see fit, making you feel violated of privacy and shut down. Higher up and leadership are also allowed to make insensitive personal jokes about people and then brush it off when they're confronted, because it is their "sense of humor" and we are just "too sensitive". Multiple technicians have witnessed and experienced this barbaric, immature BULLYING and targeting from leadership. Even going beyond the medical director, to HR is futile, because they are only there to help the company and their priorities are the people who have been with the organization longer, despite their corruption. This job has so many opportunities to help the valley's most vulnerable pets, and there are so many amazing technicians coming through wanting to learn, but end up leaving when they find out how corrupted the system is and when they've been shut down by management. They will continue to lose good technicians until something or someone even higher than them makes a big change, but sadly with how deep everyone's roots go with each other, that may never happen. You're just a number to them, always replaceable.