Casa (Kulit) Culina
I was hired as a rehabilitation nurse in a rehab hospital 3 miles from my house. Orientation was 3 days long. Typical policies and procedures, safety, fire, and other stuff like payroll and nursing policies.
The company CEO was a very optimistic kinda guy. He has vision and plans for the new hospital. There is even a plan to build a bigger hospital as the new one that opened last year is near capacity. I was realy optimistic about this new job. Man, what a change from Kaiser and Intercommunity Hospital in Covina.
My first day of orientation was going great until the nurses and the day supervisor started arguing about the changes that the nursing administrators are initiating. No one was happy and they joke about calling in sick the next day. Work wise, there is not much stress here. It's like a nursing home with realy nice pay. Considering it is only 3 mile drive for me, it's not bad. The medical insurance is not the best but it's Cigna healthcare, it can be worst.
Today was my second day of clinical orientation. More opinions about team nursing's negative effect and ineffectiveness were voice. By the way, two nursing assitants were hurt yesterday and more patients were given to the already overworked CNAs.
Team nursing consists of an RN, LVN and CNA who as a team will take care of ten patients. The RN will assess and give meds to 5 patients while overseeing the work of the LVN and give all the IV meds of all 10 patients. The RN also need to concur to the LVNs assessments if the LVN does them. Other wise, the RN can't sign the assessment and needs to do his own assessment of the LVNs five patient. The CNA will do all the baths, turning, feeding, passing trays and changing diapers. The system sucks because the CNA is stuck with 10 patients will little help. They cut down on the CNA from 5 to 3. In short there are only 3 CNAs for 30 patients and this is just bad. Each work within the team and not help other team's CNA.
First the RNs can't help the CNAs because there are tons of meds to be given at 9 am, 1pm, and 5pm. There are finger sticks at 7am, 11am, and 5pm. There are the assessments, the phone calls to the PT, OT, Speech therapists, case managers, doctors. There are dressing changes to minor wounds. Thankfully there are wound care nurses that do the bed sore care and dressing changes.
The LVNs can't hang IV meds so the RNs need to hang their IVs. It can be really busy and the patients are complaining that it takes a long time to answer their needs. Food is bad because they fired the chef that cooks great tasting food but made mistakes in diet orders that caused problems with patients with sensitive diets. Now, the food sucks and patients are complaining.
It was a discouraging situation to start off like this. While in the med room, nurses where complaining about almost everything. I just did my job and hang on till 6:30pm, quiting time.
Time will tell if I last here long enough to enjoy rehab nursing. There is another rehab hospital 35 miles away and that is Rancho Los Amigos National Rehab Center.
I'll give this place a few months and if it fails my expectations, off to San Francisco.
I was hired as a rehabilitation nurse in a rehab hospital 3 miles from my house. Orientation was 3 days long. Typical policies and procedures, safety, fire, and other stuff like payroll and nursing policies.
The company CEO was a very optimistic kinda guy. He has vision and plans for the new hospital. There is even a plan to build a bigger hospital as the new one that opened last year is near capacity. I was realy optimistic about this new job. Man, what a change from Kaiser and Intercommunity Hospital in Covina.
My first day of orientation was going great until the nurses and the day supervisor started arguing about the changes that the nursing administrators are initiating. No one was happy and they joke about calling in sick the next day. Work wise, there is not much stress here. It's like a nursing home with realy nice pay. Considering it is only 3 mile drive for me, it's not bad. The medical insurance is not the best but it's Cigna healthcare, it can be worst.
Today was my second day of clinical orientation. More opinions about team nursing's negative effect and ineffectiveness were voice. By the way, two nursing assitants were hurt yesterday and more patients were given to the already overworked CNAs.
Team nursing consists of an RN, LVN and CNA who as a team will take care of ten patients. The RN will assess and give meds to 5 patients while overseeing the work of the LVN and give all the IV meds of all 10 patients. The RN also need to concur to the LVNs assessments if the LVN does them. Other wise, the RN can't sign the assessment and needs to do his own assessment of the LVNs five patient. The CNA will do all the baths, turning, feeding, passing trays and changing diapers. The system sucks because the CNA is stuck with 10 patients will little help. They cut down on the CNA from 5 to 3. In short there are only 3 CNAs for 30 patients and this is just bad. Each work within the team and not help other team's CNA.
First the RNs can't help the CNAs because there are tons of meds to be given at 9 am, 1pm, and 5pm. There are finger sticks at 7am, 11am, and 5pm. There are the assessments, the phone calls to the PT, OT, Speech therapists, case managers, doctors. There are dressing changes to minor wounds. Thankfully there are wound care nurses that do the bed sore care and dressing changes.
The LVNs can't hang IV meds so the RNs need to hang their IVs. It can be really busy and the patients are complaining that it takes a long time to answer their needs. Food is bad because they fired the chef that cooks great tasting food but made mistakes in diet orders that caused problems with patients with sensitive diets. Now, the food sucks and patients are complaining.
It was a discouraging situation to start off like this. While in the med room, nurses where complaining about almost everything. I just did my job and hang on till 6:30pm, quiting time.
Time will tell if I last here long enough to enjoy rehab nursing. There is another rehab hospital 35 miles away and that is Rancho Los Amigos National Rehab Center.
I'll give this place a few months and if it fails my expectations, off to San Francisco.
