I’m not entirely sure where to start or what my objective is, but the scenes I have witnessed at my job are too much to handle so I need to vent. I work for a regional healthcare company doing Payroll/HR for a couple of their Assisted Living/Skilled nursing facilities. I was poached from my previous job in promises of having it be much less stressful, and boy did I jump out of the pan and into the fire.
These buildings are short staffed as most places are, but to a different degree. My first week I had witnessed an elderly woman yelling for help while the only nurse on the floor was sitting at her desk online shopping. Knowing I legally couldn’t assist this woman (or know what to do) I ran to report this to nursing management, by the time they got to the woman’s room but she had already coded and passed away. Her daughter had called asking about her mother AS SHE WAS DYING and the nurse told her she was doing fine. This employee was not fired or remotely disciplined. I still have nightmares knowing she could have been saved.
There is a COVID hall where residents who are sick stay, one day I counted 9 hours where the hall was unattended by any nursing staff. Call lights of patients needing help were going on for hours, knowing I couldnt let this happen again, I did my best to help them go to the bathroom and cleanup heaps of feces and urine off of these poor people. Elderly walking around without any clothes on, trying to get out of bed without assistance and falling, etc. Being in HR I’ve had multiple employees come to me crying about the conditions of these residents and their own safety. New admissions are given to the nurses everyday even though there isn’t enough staff to take care of the patients they already have. PPE equipment is barely used or regulated, family members of patients walk in and out freely without masks, etc.
I’ve reported these conditions to corporate, the management of the building, and nothing gets done about it. Along with that I do a lot of the hiring for these facilities and it’s awful selling a lie to these employees and watching them quit after a week of seeing how piss poor these facilities are ran. I am looking for a new job but I really fear for these people and don’t know what else I can do to help them.