You know things are going to be bad when, during orientation, you are told the job will make you cry. Not because of anything as profound as losing a patient, but because the stress and demands are too great.
The workload is too high. Where hospitals in California have a maximum ratio of 5 patients per nurse, here you may have up to 22 patients. You are expected to care for the patients, give meds, do assessments, etc. in a timely fashion. In my time there I never saw another nurse do an actual assessment, yet each day they charted that they did and results were within normal limits. There needs to be a state-mandated maximum number of patients for nursing homes that is in line with that of hospitals.
At the Walnut Creek location where I worked I received almost no support from other staff. We were told that patient care staff as well as all other employees need to wear a face shield at all times because when a call light goes off anyone close by is expected to answer it. The reality is that only assigned patient care staff answer those lights, and sometimes it takes 5, 15, 25 minutes for them to do so. There are no "charge" or "relief" nurses like at hospitals, but each unit is supposed to have someone you can ask questions of. The person on staff there was not helpful; in fact, they were antagonistic, rarely giving me a straight answer, and often questioning things that were none of her concern. (Why do you need a piece of tape? What are you going to do with the tape?")
In the time I first worked on my own there (meaning, just after I was out of training) I kept telling my supervisor that I was overwhelmed and could not handle the patient load I was given; it was taking me 12+ hours to complete the work for my 8 hour shift. As a new employee I should have been given the support I needed to succeed. But no, my supervisor's response was to double my workload for the following day.
Also, if you need a supervisor it is almost impossible to find one. Employees do not wear pagers or Voceras or similar; you have to either walk around the facility until you find the person, or you have to have their number on your phone so you can contact them via WhatsApp, and I wasn't even told that until after I had worked there for weeks.
It's no wonder the turnover there is so high. They don't even have long-term nurses to train the new nurses. One of my trainers had only just gotten off probation themselves, and laughed when I announced I was supposed to be training with them that day.
Oh, and the pay is crappy. $39 an hour, about half what you'd make at a good hospital in the same area.
