Pros
-Pay seemed okay at first, but compared to the workload it should have been a lot more. -It starts with group orientation, so having other new employees share the experience was nice since I was new to dialysis. -The doctors were nice. -Standing orders for most things were good to have, if you knew where to look for them.
Cons
-Lack of proper orientation for transitional care nurses. Plenty of resources for traditional HD nurses, but I was taken off orientation without being properly trained on how to educate patients specifically in the TCU setting. I had prior hospital experience, but I was BRAND NEW to dialysis. -Inaccurate job description. During the interview, I was told that it was primarily an patient education-oriented job. The hours would be M-F, 8-5, 40 hours/week. I ended up working up to 60 hrs/week. -Management/admissions/charge RNs continued to add patients to my schedule outside of my usual hours. When I spoke up, I was guilt-tripped and shamed. -There was no full time CNA at the TCU at my location, so I was doing most of the patient treatments, education, stocking, and charting by myself. I could use home dialysis staff as a resource, but they were busy too. Sometimes they would ask CNAs from other clinics to help, but it was never a guarantee that I would be able to secure help for the day. -Hard on the body. I injured my finger from pressing the same button repeatedly. My back and knees suffered from stocking by myself. They ask you if you can lift up to 50lbs, but it wasn't disclosed exactly how much manual labor was involved. -What I learned in orientation and in the policies was sometimes completely different from what seasoned staff were doing on the floor. When I spoke up, I was shamed - "That's how it's always been done" "You're still new so you'll learn later" -When my main preceptor was on PTO, I was paired with a few different people who shouldn't have been teaching, One wasn't even a real preceptor. It was my second week, I had just learned how to start a treatment so I was slow, and she told me "If you're gonna do this job, you have to be able to keep up"...um excuse me? -It felt like they used a different computer program for every single task.