Pros
From my experience, it's worse at Dignity
Cons
Stay away from San Joaquin Community. Besides the usual bullying of nursing culture, this is one of the worst hospitals to work for in the state of California. I’ve worked in other facilities prior to this and this is the only hospital where they are constantly short staffed. To be asked to work 16 hour shifts is the norm. They’ll either ask you to stay an extra 4 hours or come in 4 hours early. It doesn’t not matter whether or not you’ve already worked your 3 days or in the middle of it, if you don’t do it, you will be bullied. The new grad program is horrible. The program is disorganized and the preceptors are unknowledgabe. My preceptor, who was a seasoned nurse, would ask other nurses including other new grads what to do when I asked her a question. Everyone is clueless. The machines are outdated. Imagine having an RRT and calling a doctor who is already upset and has a strong accent, on a bad cell phone reception and your outdated spectra link is having it’s own issues. Computers keep freezing up. Especially during a med pass. The tube systems can break down from time to time. So you have to run across campus to get blood as necessary. We are one of the lowest paid facilities and it shows. Don’t’ believe me? Take a tour at one of our facilities. Don’t let the star bucks and valley parking fool you. There is no live interpreter. You have to use the phone, which I previously mentioned has issues, making communication almost impossible at times. Arranging patient transport can be time consuming so typically nurses have to bring each of their patient down for CT, MRI, etc. You will be floated. It does not matter if you are a medsurg nurse, an ICU nurse, whatever. All nurses are floated to high acquity departments such as ICU and ER. The worse part is, the ER float offers no orientation. You will be taking care of ACTUAL ER PATIENTS and no one will help you. You may get lucky and get some help with other floats, but don’t expect it as the ER is very fast paced and has some of the worst bullies in the hospitals.