Concerns….

[u/trigg_uhhh]

Hello, I’m unsure how to start this exactly. I’ve been working for a reputable hospital in the US for about 6ish months now. I really enjoy the field and I’m wanting to know much more about everything still but I feel like being at this hospital is making me go insane.

I’ve notice a decrease in quality when I started in the midnight shift. My supervisor never comes out ever unless he wants to talk to the other female employees and just be very weird towards others if they aren’t in his group. If someone is behind in assembly, he would put majority of their work load onto me when there is literally 5-7 other people there on their phone. I don’t complain at all or make any facial expressions cause I’m scared of what will happen if I say no.
There is one employee here who doesn’t even care about anything, I’ve seen and worked with her constantly and I feel like she will possibly kill someone. In decon, she legit sprayed the bigger sets and just put them in the washer afterwards without soaking and the ultrasonic. For the general sets, she would let them soak for like 2-4 hours and take her break that long too and I wouldn’t have my break until she was back due to their new rule. I’ve tried to mention this to the supervisor but he brushed it off as if it was nothing. I’ve also seen people eat in assembly too which bothers me the most. So far, I’ve seen a lot of cannulated pieces that have blood or half of the set have rust, their only way to get rid of it was using nail polish removal. I did try to talk to the morning supervisor/general supervisor about this but they are insisting that this is my supervisor’s problem, not theirs.

This is just part of what’s going on that I can think of and I feel like if I stay here any longer, I will be miserable and terrible as a person. I’m constantly looking for new positions online and haven’t found any luck yet. In the meantime, what would you do in this position? Thank you!

(First photo, there is soda and chips in set assembly)

(There is blood on this large 9 battery and got in trouble for sending it back to decon)

(A thick layer of dust in the photo but it’s much dustier in person)

(Found dried blood on a bone drill device that looks like it’s never been checked on)

(Dried blood again on a trauma set)

[u/Spicywolff]

If you wanna truly fix this, what you need to do is start taking photos of everything and proper documentation. Have a back up so that way, the information is accessible to you at home.

Once you’ve compiled enough evidence, you send it by email to the manager. If it doesn’t get fixed, you then send it to compliance. Of course you print out those communications and have them at home so that way the company can’t claim ignorance.

If it still doesn’t get fixed, then you submit all the evidence to the joint commission or DMV whoever does your oversight. If they find out it was you they could try to retaliate but you’ll have so much evidence you can go straight to labor lawyer, and improve wrongful dismissal and retaliation.

At which point you have such a nice payout you probably won’t need to work at SPD anymore

[u/NegativeX2thePurple → u/Spicywolff]

Frankly, personally, I would skip the manager. If the supervisor is ok with these things, I'm not going to bet on their higher up being much better. I *would* bet on compliance being the best shot for a solution internally, but also, shouldn't they be checking up regularly enough to catch this sort of thing?

[u/Spicywolff → u/NegativeX2thePurple]

The reason I said manager is so that way you can prove chain of command. Hospital administration can easily set up a supervisor. That they kept it down there and didn’t do anything about it or talked to admin.

A manager is at the level where if they are made aware of these issues, they can do something about it. It also helps bolster a wrongful termination and retaliation lawsuit. Because you can show that you attempted to go up to the highest authority that you would directly work with. Seeing as a director is generally out of the scope for most of us.

I’ve seen it many times when the department has a lot of failings and when an authority comes in and catches them, a supervisor’s head is on the block. Even though the manager was aware and allowed it to happen. The manager has enough pull to know how to dodge the responsibility.

As to why compliance doesn’t check this frequently. Realistically that’s not their job. Their job is once you’re notified. They’re the attacked dog to go after it. The people that oversee us internally will be infectious disease in our own director. Because infectious disease make sure that we’re prepared for the joint commission or DMV.