Pros
If you want to work in a specialty area, like CVICU or something, it’s easier to get into one of those units here because they have a high rate of turn over and are always hiring. A lot of nurses come and get their 6 months or year, and then move on to places like the Bay Area where it’s harder to get into those specialties.
Cons
Literally everything else. First, they don’t pay as well as other hospitals. They benefits they offer are ok, but you can only go to clinics within the KDHCD, so your options are limited, especially if you don’t live in Visalia. The upper level admin and management is so beyond disorganized it’s a joke. When the pandemic first hit they told employees we were only receiving one mask and if it broke we needed to try and fix it. I actually brought in a few masks from home (that I bought with my own money) and I got called into the office and got a verbal for taking more mask then I was allowed to, despite the fact that I BROUGHT IT FROM HOME! The hospital itself is so poorly run that I am honestly surprised it hasn’t been shut down down now. They waste money on the absolutely most absurd things, like a team of LPNs that literally all they do is go around and audit charts to see when they IV was last changed; they don’t actually start IVs, even though they are the IV team, no they check to see if the IV is do to be changed and then tell the floor nurse to do it ( IVs have to be changed every 3 days btw), they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars redoing the ED and CVICU, which granted needed to be bigger, BUT literally half the hospital is from the 1970’s and has failed the earthquake compliance inspection for the past decade and they just keep getting extensions to fix it, so basically any where besides the ED and the CVICU is a death trap if there is ever a large earthquake, which it’s California sooooooooooo… but aside from that they expect the floor nurses to do all first set of VS on their shift themselves and do manual BP, they will constantly but the RNs over ratio, even on the tele units and critical care units (even before Covid), they don’t have a lift team and the patients that I would have were physically and medically heavy, like 4 out of 6 patients, full care with minimal help from aids (who are also overwhelmed and under staffed). Honestly when it comes down to it I could have put up with the heavy patient load, and the physical part of the job, but the management and the admin do not care about their staff. They do not care about your well-being, they don’t care about making a supportive environment, they do not foster an environment of teamwork, they will over work you, gaslight you when you complain about poor treatment, and finally they will out punish staff members when they speak out. Almost every single upper level management I had the displeasure of dealing with, had a very stuck up attitude and talked down to the employees, including during the onboarding process. Honestly my time here was a hot mess from the start; even the employee health department is incompetent. Just please DO NOT WORK HERE!!!!