Prime Healthcare took over several years ago to "save" the hospital from bankrupcy. The way they did that you might wonder? They promptly laid off about 30% of the staff and then hired young, inexperienced staff to replace them for a fraction of the pay. The remaining experienced staff have been slowly bullied into quitting, or flat out fired for bogus reasons (for example: reading a book in the nurses station). This leaves few to no experienced staff left for training purposes. On my unit new hire nurses were training new hire nurses. Literally the blind leading the blind, so patient care suffered horrifically as a result.
Pay is the lowest in San Diego. For example, minimum wage is offered to support staff, such as CNA's, Secretaries, and Techs. Nurses make barely more than $20/hour.
Staffing is always short. We never had enough support staff on the floors. Nurses would frequently be forced to take more patients then the state mandated ratios. CNA's often had 20-30 patients each, and Secretaries are required to work multiple nurses stations or floors at once. This is obviously a huge safety concern for both staff and patients. Employee injury rates were high and patient falls and safety incidents were frequent.
Turnover rates are the highest I have ever seen in my 10 years of working in healthcare. This place is like a revolving door, with most nursing staff working there for less than a year.
In a nutshell, this place is a nightmare. Do yourself a favor and look for a job in one of the many well respected hospitals in San Diego county that actually give their employees some basic respect.
