RN - RN ChildrenFirst Health Care System Employee Review

The cons are unfortunately many: 1.) HR has put together a really comprehensive training agenda for new employees; but no one in management follows it or even checks that it’s being followed. My preceptor was not even scheduled to work on the day they scheduled my 1st shift and no one had any idea what to do with me. I had paperwork detailing what my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd shifts should include and a 90 day evaluation. I sent in my 1st and 2nd shift papers to HR - no one ever asked about my missing 3rd shift paper and no one ever asked about or brought up or completed my 90 day evaluation. 2.) The administration has a lack of foresight - so much of what they do is reactionary, no long range vision or proactive process. Admin constantly issuing nursing staff new policies; unfortunately there was no consistency with communicating them to staff, sometimes email, sometimes word-of-mouth, sometimes taped to the wall. All written communications ended with the comment to adhere to the new policy or risk consequences “up to and including termination”. Not a very positive method. 3.) As with anywhere, you have good colleagues and you have not so good colleagues - ChildrenFirst has a lot of great nursing colleagues, however they do have their fair share of back-biting and office politics. Admin seems to have their favorite pets and everyone else is thrown to the wolves. 4.) For a medical facility, there was a remarkable lack of medical supplies. We had ZERO Med administration syringes. Ever. No supply of gtube extension tubes or 60ml syringes for boluses. Unfortunately, our population of pediatric patients are economically disadvantaged and the majority of their parents didn’t have the knowledge, the concern, or the money to ensure they sent in adequate supplies for their child’s care. Most of the supplies sent in were not appropriately clean. Our centers also had no time allotted and no supplies needed to do anything other than give neb cups, syringes, and gtube extensions a quick rinse. It’s heartbreaking to have to use less than clean equipment when clean equipment should and could be available. 5.) Due the above mentioned issues I observed in the general majority of parents (knowledge deficits, lack of concern, lack of parenting skills) the administration demonstrated a lack of parental teaching and educating. If a parent said “I want my child potty trained now” they expected our center to magically potty train them without any parental follow thru or consistency or involvement. Unfortunately, the administration gave no support to the nursing staff to improve this. 6.) The centers emphasize being a preschool, with certified preschool teachers. That being the case, you would expect to see a population under 5 year old and older children with cognitive issues putting them on an intellectually younger mental age level. Actually, each center has more than a few older children, up to and including teenagers who are not intellectually on a preschool level. While the preschool age children are encouraged in activities such as art, music, dancing, free play, structured play, circle time, etc. The older children are segregated in a separate area and given ZERO intellectual stimulation beyond having children’s videos playing on the TV. There is nursing staff AND teaching staff for the young children, but there is only nursing staff for the older children and our time is completely consumed with nursing issues of med administration, repositioning patients, feeding, and changing the older patients and we have NO time to devote to attending to the emotional or intellectual stimulation of the older children. They are literally being warehoused with only their most basic physical needs being attended to. (This is heartbreaking.) We, the nursing staff, literally have not enough hands to do anything more and administration doesn’t add staff. 7.) There are a number of children at the centers who have severe behavioral issues that make them ill-equipped to function without 1:1 attention and oversight in a preschool for medically fragile patients. The administration has not addressed this in anyway: have not brought in behavioral specialists, have not increased staffing, have not discussed more appropriate settings for some of the children with severe behavioral issues and minor medical issues. It’s a dumping ground of behavior issues and I doubt the parents of the trached and vent children realize how much time is diverted away from their child’s care just to insure these behavioral children do not hurt themselves or any of the other children. I tried, I really did. There was just no responsibility from the administration to address ANY of these critical issues. All I can say is I would not place my own child at any of these centers. Working here is like drowning in a sea of chaos and the admin won’t throw you the life preserver.