Pros
good pay and decent benefits
Cons
* High turnover for good reason. * Cannot maintain nursing management to save their life. *Across the board, every employee hates their job here. * Reverse racism is a huge problem and management refuses to acknowledge it. When it's been brought up, management lets you know it’s ‘out of their hands' and states that we 'all just need to get along.' *You will get fired for speaking out or voicing concerns. *It's a well known fact that we do not have the supplies, support, staff, processes or training necessary to care for these patients but management refuses to slow down on admitting new kids. *1:13 nurse to patient ratio on a good day.. With patients sleeping on different units and programming on yours, it can be more like 1:17. Within the first hour of your shift you will be responsible for drawing and running the patients blood, obtaining weights, administering medication, performing blood sugar checks, skin checks and assessments for, again, up to 13 patients. *Nurses are expected to provide meal support but the food is under or overcooked, saturated in grease or salt and usually served cold. The staff you would think would be eating with the kids (dietitians and therapist) sit in the employee break room and enjoy an hour or longer lunch break during this time. *The medication is kept in a large tool box from a hardware store on each unit. (yeah, I'm not kidding.) *The charting system was not designed for hospitals so it doesn't alert you when things are due or overdue. *You are expected to provide meal support and then immediately return to your unit to administer tube feeds for anywhere 1 to 5 patients. *Usually, it's one nurse per unit and sometimes you'll be assigned a medical assistant. Some MA's are wonderful, but most will completely ignore you when you speak to them and will disappear to another unit with their buddies directly after doing the least amount of work possible. You won't see them for the rest of the day. *We've had patient's spit in staff members faces, on their food or threaten them. Management does nothing. *When patient's are having breakdowns and cutting themselves- their treatment team is no where to be found and other team members will refuse to help since it's 'not their patient.' *Huge pay discrepancy between male nurses and female nurses. *As a nurse, we all discuss the fact that our license are on the line every time we come into work. We are asked to maintain completely unsafe patient/nurse ratios, asked to do things outside of our scope of practice and turn a blind eye to obvious unethical and sometimes, illegal, practices.
