This is going to be long so bear with me.
I work in healthcare (radiology) I started working at this tiny little hospital about 10 minutes away from my home, night shift. I took the position because of proximity, monday-Friday schedule and I would still have evenings with my kids. Plus I am going back to school, so the downtime on night shift will allow me to do homework and study and freedom during the day will allow me to do my classes online. The hospital is in a bad part of town. Super high crime rate. Like don’t stop at the stop signs and roll your windows up type deal. There are GSWs, assaults, and psych patients nightly.
When I accepted the position I was told that I’d never work alone. That was a lie from pretty much day one. There was another tech working with me at first but only for 3 days a week. She has since quit and now I am 100% completely on my own which I feel is a huge safety risk. If a patient goes crazy in my room, no one will hear me scream. Just the other day I encountered a person roaming the halls and started asking me for money and crackers and I asked the ER if they had any escapees or anyone who was supposed to be in the waiting room and they said no. So I call security and they find this lady. She’s all high on something and had two knives on her. I still have no idea how she accessed my part of the hospital.
Our equipment is crap. Bad connection issues, half the time won’t let me take an image, but it’s random. This happens one time during a trauma. I could not get the equipment to connect so I could take an image. It was a big stink. I called one of my supervisors “T” at 3am in a panic with a doctor down my throat and then just magically it started working.And I get “oh yeah that happens sometimes. Sorry no one warned you.” I guess this came up in a meeting and they were asking Supervisor “S” about the equipment and he made it out to be all my fault even though supervisor “T” told them that it’s just shitty equipment, bottom line.
Supervisor T told me that he was telling these people at the meeting that one time that there was a “code trauma” called on my shift and it took me a long time to go over there and I was like what? First of all we don’t even have a such thing as a “code trauma” and second of all if there’s a code, im over there waiting on them to let me X-ray, not the other way around and she was like I know I called security and asked them and none of them have ever heard of a code trauma and the operator said there was no record of any code being called that night…. So like wtf is this dude trying to do?
One day I get a text from supervisor “s” saying “starting Monday you’ll be working Monday-Thursday 8-630 instead of Monday-Friday 10-6:30 we have a tech going on leave. This was never discussed or asked of me, just “this is what we’re doing”
Third thing was , last week my infant was hospitalized for 4 days, so I had to take off work. I kept him updated the whole time and on Day 4 when we got released at 4pm he said “ok so see you at 8?” And I said no, we were just released and I’m exhausted. There is no sleep in the hospital and mistakes happen when you’re sleep deprived. He responded with “well we are already out two evening techs and I’m out of the area.” I said “im sorry you’re having staffing issues, but my child comes first and it would not be safe for my patients if I worked tonight.” He never responded.
I left one shitty workplace for another and I’m just ready to get out of healthcare altogether at this point. The burnout is real and there is no appreciation.