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Creating Her Own Career Path Helping Employees Create the Journey of a Lifetime
Here and now, Banner Health is the choice for more than 29,000 employees who consider it the place where they can create their career journey of a lifetime. More than 12,000 of our employees have been with us for five years or more, more than 4,000 have been with Banner for more than 10 years, and an astonishing 2,300 of our employees have been with us for more than 20 years. Is Banner Health a great place to work? Ask all of them.

Our employees are coming to know their career opportunity at Banner as the Journey of a Lifetime. It’s really a simple proposition based on our mission: We’ll help make a difference in your life and career so that you can make a difference in the lives of others.

How can we help make a difference? We do it by giving all employees a voice in improving their workplace environment through The Gallup Employee Engagement Q12 survey. This survey measures the quality of work environments throughout Banner and gives employees the opportunity to be involved in creating work plans that enhance their respective areas. Additionally, Banner places a high premium on the ability of any employee to work directly with his or her manager on workplace or job-performance issues. Throughout Banner, caregivers and others work in shared leadership models that help direct patient care.
Working at McKee Medical Center allowed Jennie Washburn to change careers while remaining with the same employer. Strong support from Banner Health helped her make the journey from physical therapist to pharmacist.

She became interested in health care after being treated for various sports injuries in high school.

When she became a physical therapist, she thought she would spend her time rehabilitating athletes. Instead, she fell in love with hospital work, helping everyone from children to the elderly recover their strength after surgery. Because of McKee’s friendly and close-knit work environment, Washburn learned about others’ jobs and decided to become a pharmacist.
Here and now, Banner Health has made a commitment to its employees to help them make a difference in the lives of others
We help make a difference for our employees through ample learning opportunities as well as a generous annual tuition reimbursement provided to employees who want to improve their knowledge and skills through further education. Employees in entry-level positions can enhance their career growth by participating in our Essential Career Pathways program that supports employees who are moving into hard-to-fill, high-level positions.This is in addition to our extensive educational programs for people just getting into the health care field.

Our commitment to learning transcends the classroom and is brought to employees’ desktops through the Banner Learning Center, a common learning management system containing all Banner Health course offerings. We currently have 2,084 courses (50 percent classroom and 50 percent online). Subjects range from leadership development to medical courses.

Across the country, health organizations are grappling with the challenge of providing meaningful career enhancements for mature employees. At Banner Health, we have created a mature workforce team to ensure we remain an excellent place to work for all of our employees.

Banner employees greatly value our comprehensive total compensation package that includes salaries and benefits. As a major employer in every community we serve, Banner Health is market competitive in the compensation we offer and a leader in providing a broad-based menu of benefits that can be "customized" throughout an employee’s career and easily modified to adjust to major life changes.
Banner Health helped her by providing $3,000 a year for tuition to the four-year pharmacy program. Her McKee “family” helped her by providing flexible hours and encouragement. “I think if I had done this anywhere else, I would have had a much harder time,” she says. Now, Washburn has her doctor of pharmacy degree, a new job at McKee and a new set of opportunities ahead of her.
Unique Programs Provide Perfect Fit for Mature Workforce
Barbara Burford thought her 30-year nursing career was over when her doctor told her she could no longer lift patients.

Instead of being sidelined, Burford, who has been with Banner Health for more than 25 years, now works in our innovative iCare program, which has nurses and doctors provide an extra set of eyes to patients hundreds of miles away through a sophisticated telemedicine program.

From her station on the campus of Banner Desert Medical Center, Burford can watch over dozens of patients, ready to let each patient’s nurses know about any changes. The iCare system has been shown to save lives and Burford knows from her years of experience how valuable an extra pair of eyes is for a nurse at the bedside. "We are here to do whatever is best for the patient," she says.

Burford’s new career also shows Banner Health’s desire to be innovative when it comes to creating new opportunities for our mature workforce. We know that nurses like Barbara Burford have a wealth of knowledge in providing excellent patient care and we value them for their expertise.
The Language of Healing
Maggie Castillo always dreamed of being a nurse. When she started her education to become one, she realized she wanted to be a Banner Health nurse.

When she began nursing school, Castillo had to quit her job because she couldn’t work around her class schedule. She and her husband faced a tight budget and large student loans because their income was too high to qualify for any educational financial assistance. When she heard about Banner Health’s Bilingual Nurse Fellows Program, which pays for a student’s tuition, books and fees, she thought it sounded "too good to be true."

Castillo became a full-time student who could concentrate on her education and be secure in the knowledge that she had a good job waiting for her after graduation. As part of the fellowship program, Banner Health counselors worked with Castillo to help her find the right hospital department for her to start her career.

Castillo is a nurse at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, where she is confident that she makes a difference in her patients’ lives.

"When I come into the room and say �Buenos dias,’ my Hispanic patients’ eyes just light up. They know there is someone there who can communicate with them. It makes me feel great to be a nurse and work at Banner."