behavior technician

registered nurse

dietitian

therapist

psychotherapist

The Emily Program

I only ended up staying for the free food and the patients. The kids are wonderful but the job isn’t even worth it because BHTs are forced to follow a very by-the-book system of care, which is difficult because it seems only upper management knows the contents of that book, and you don’t know you did something wrong until you’re called into their office. BHTs are reduced to glorified babysitters. Many employees regularly say triggering or inappropriate things to patients. Patients’ pronouns are NEVER respected. 

I never even once felt like a valued employee, but more of a cog in a machine. 

Communication is a joke, with mistakes caused by practitioner incompetence happening on the daily that the BHTs end up being the punching bags for. Providers regularly forget to update patient orders or give patient wrong information, leaving us in the fallout when the patient isn’t having their needs met.

The place is regularly “overstaffed” (i.e., adequately staffed). They force several people to go home, suddenly acuity spikes, and we’re now understaffed. Rinse and repeat. The place is still hiring people every day despite layoffs and over staffing, so don’t count on job security.

Day shifts are 12.5 hours (although often longer because night shift is always late). You get “2 15s and a 30,” although no one ever has time for their second 15 of the day, so that’s robbed from you. If you try to bring it up to management they just turn it on you about your own time management skills. 

Agree with what another person said, where the patients are more empathetic than the actual staff. Whenever I’ve been frustrated on the job, it’s the patients that have improved my day. Most of them are truly kind, empathetic people who just want to get out of there. If you’re looking for a beginner job dealing with kids or adults in mental health, this would be a good short-term stepping stone. Definitely have regular appointments with a therapist and be mindful of your own disordered eating, as that is a socially contagious disorder. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
It’s rewarding to be apart of someone’s recovery journey and hopefully help them in some meaningful way 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The company is expanding too quickly and their residential location at least is suffering as a result. It really shows in the lack of training for probably all staff and the very high turnover rate in the lower rung positions while management needs replacing but hasn’t changed. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Pretty toxic work environment because you’re asked to take on more tasks than can be realistically accomplished while also dealing with emotional burnout from the patients and their outbursts or incidents. You’re expected to be like their therapists but without any training in conflict resolution or when/ how to challenge patients with their disorder symptoms. And if any patients don’t like a staff member - regardless of if the complaint is legitimate, someone ends up getting fired to appease them into staying at the facility. It happened several times to other staff while I was working there only a few months. During that time, we’d also had two patients come back after having been at the residential facility once or even twice already before. The staff see many patients who don’t recover and return again later as a result, which I think should be another red flag. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Managing and documenting inventory, checking fridge and freezer temps, data collection about residents while sharing meals with them, data entry into excel, copying other documents, checking meals and portions for accuracy, preparing or ordering meals if working weekends, meetings to discuss patients’ progress or lack thereof, possible grocery store runs

I regret working for Veritas. It has been the biggest mistake of my career.  It is a toxic environment. Management doesn’t care about the frontline staff. They offer very little support. The RNs and TAs are not respected. Therapists and dieticians don’t listen to the staff that actually spends time with the patients. They want to incorporate policies and procedures that are unrealistic. This company is a class action law suit waiting to happen. The nursing supervisor was sexually inappropriate with me. I made a complaint to HR. Several other of his subordinates made complaints against him and no disciplinary action was taken. I would not want my daughter in this facility with this person as a nursing supervisor. They also expect frontline staff to eat with the patients for meal support. Staff are gaining weight and being diagnosed with prediabetes because of eating at Veritas. Staff who have provided medical documentation from their medical providers as to why they can’t eat with the patients due to diabetes or hypertension, etc. were fired. I’m not sacrificing my mental or physical health for any employer. No one should have neglect their own health and medical needs for an employer. They are not helping these patients. The patients are discharged weighing more than their normal body weight. They leave Veritas with an unhealthy BMI. They have had several readmissions lately. This should indicate to them that they are not successfully treating these patients. Policies and patient procedures are inconsistent. Veritas couldn’t function without the RNs and TAs, yet we are not valued in this facility.  I do not recommend working for Veritas. If you are a RN you can easily find a job elsewhere. Do not work for Veritas. They are going to have difficulty finding and keeping good employees.

I absolutely love my job here and the pay is amazing.  I have been very happy here and love the fact that my management was more than willing to help me get skilled in areas that I had no previous training in.  My typical day here involves getting weights and orthostatic vitals on every patient, obtaining labs from the patients they are ordered on, processing labs on in house testing devices, ensuring all necessary blood glucose results are reported to RN's and documented in the patients chart.  Next, I ensure all values for any testing that I performed are charted in patients charts and if any of the resulting values are not WNL, I would call the patients provider to let them know. I spend the rest of my shift supporting our patients through their daily programming, treating self inflicted wounds, completing any NGTF that are needed for refusal of meals.
The only reason that I am leaving this job, is due to the fact that they are now changing to 12 hour shifts and I am unable to find 12 hour daycare for my children. I took this job for the 8 hour shifts.
The most enjoyable part of my job here is learning more about adolescents with Eating Disorders secondary to Psychological disorders.  I really enjoying getting to know our kids and helping by supporting them with dining as well as playing games with them to help alleviate anxiety during the day.

Veritas has the potential to be great but based on my experience working there, they only care about the money. If patients are the priority, why are we having multiple re-admits for up to three times? From a psychological standpoint, I understand eating disorders; however isn't the purpose of getting good treatment is to make sure they don't come back or go somewhere else? Besides that, the turnover rate from a lot of the campuses is ridiculous. TAs are treated like the lower end of the totem pole, but do the most work. It's sad how some of the patients feel like they get more support from the TAs than their actual team. But with the lack of support and appreciation, a lot of the "good" staff are leaving, which leaves the patients with staff that don't care. I mean, if management doesn't care about you, why should you? It's a toxic work environment; people are cliquey, gossip and you have some people take their titles to their heads but get .10 promotion per year. On top of that, the incentives they are finally giving out because they have to beg for staff to come in is about $200 when other healthcare places are paying you more. People call out and you're left with running the whole unit of 13 kids alone with an ECO, a Bathroom 0 and a COS while trying to meal support and might not even get a break because of it. Out of all the mental health places, this is the less intense one and it's a great way to gain experience; however if you expect to move up, unless you kiss up to the higher ups, get your experience and get out.

This company it not only money hungry, but it is unethical. During my employment, I had frequent concerns for patient care. 1. Therapists often have zero experience in working with the eating disorder population (hardest population to work with). 2. TA department is made up. These individuals are often bachelor degree holding young people who have zero experience in healthcare. TAs are glorified camp counselors working with severely mentally ill patients. 3. This company cannot keep nurses. Nurses are usually temp agency nurses or travel nurses. This is unsafe due to the many complicated medication administration practices and the outdated EMR. Temp nurses simply don't work enough to learn these systems and don't have the buy in from a full time employee. 4. Nurses are given zero psychiatric patient care training. I think most people assume nurses know how to care for the mentally ill, but it should be taught and trained on frequently. 5. Nurses have no say in patient care or their care plans. 6. No doctors after 6pm. Doctors are not onsite after business hours. 

Outside of the patient care concerns, I had a negative outlook on the company as a whole when I saw the way the Atlanta hospital was opened. The management at this hospital did not take anyone's opinion into consideration when making decisions and did not adequately train staff on their jobs. This hospital spent many months without a Nurse Manager or Nurse Supervisor. This hospital has had many complaints of blatant racism.

I would not recommend working at the Children and Adolescent location and agree with all the reviews about this location. The management is awful and act like they do not care about employees; they only interact with the patients and staff to reprimand them. Some employees are extremely rude and make the job way more difficult. It is very difficult to ask for help without being met with anger and judgement. Your workday experience will vary greatly based on who you are put on shift with. The work culture is very poor; everyone is miserable and it shows. The kids pick up on how poor the work environment is and how the staff are unhappy, which is additional stress on the patients that they don't deserve. For the most part, the kids are respectful and nice as long as you respect them back, leading them to be the only thing I liked about the job. Building rapport with the patients was extremely rewarding and helped facilitate their recovery; the job gets easier as rapport gets built and when patients feel like they can trust you. I did learn some valuable information about eating disorders, but the disrespect from management and other employees is why I left. I excepted some disrespect from the patients due to their illness, but I did not except to be regularly disrespected and cussed at by staff. Please do not work here, it will negatively impact your mental health greatly. 

I have a long career as an excellent psychiatric nurse. Veritas has no use for that statement. They do not value their nursing staff and as a result , nurses are fired/leaving constantly. I was expected to be the only nurse with a new nurse for days in a row with no help from the manager who said she would be there if we needed her. Had to manage patients and meds on three separate units all at one time..impossible and unsafe.. I begged her to come in when the place was chaos for 3 solid days who no help in sight. I was fired  right after I asked for help , when I reported a mistake I made during that chaos. And the manager refused to come in and help. It was not an offense that required firing but the manager was hostile. They admit patients who are too dangerous to be on the unit and expect us to adjust in an environment that is unsafe for suicidal patients. Unfortunately they leave many good patients scared to death that they will be assaulted. Meanwhile they want us to work even harder so they they can reap the profits. The owners forgot to pay their license to distribute narcotics so that the nurses had to wait until they renewed their license to give those meds to patients. Highly disorganized care in many aspects. Nurse managers fired and leaving staff with no managers for months... Bringing in a new computer charting format and no staff teaching ever done on roll out. Fly by the seat of your pants and you are lucky if you last a year.

 Loved the company mission. With that said, I grew to dread going to that place because of how the  Executive Chef conducted himself. He was a horrible manager. He was the main reason for a lot of strife and division in the culinary department. He's childish, petty and messy. You can never go to him with any concerns without him putting you down with the other staff members. He was more concerned about his personal friendship with a certain staff member than the culinary department as a whole. He discussed staff's business and left important private documents sitting around for all to see. 
He allowed the worker he is friends with to come to work late just about everyday and knew he would disappear for hours on company time. He asked the Sous Chef to report to him what time his friend came in and left because he was clocking in and out on his phone for times he was not in the building. He had no moral compass and verbally attacked anyone who had the nerve to disagree with him. Complaining about what was going on was ineffective because upper management only see what he pretends to be, not who he really is. They are not in the kitchen to experience his behavior. I've seen good hard working staff lose their jobs because of his favoritism and unfair actions.  I was warned about his many faces and I found out that it was true. Good luck to anyone working in that kitchen. And stay away from the gossiping. 

As a TA the majority of the time it feels like the only people who value you are other TAs. Upper management tells us how much they appreciate us, but their actions show the opposite. Rules are created to cater to admin staff and non-essential staff. The word "collaborative" is used so often in the facility, and there is a considerable lack of transparency regarding changes that primarily affect frontline staff. The company is so focused on money that employees (then, unfortunately, patients) are suffering because there are fewer people to do the job. Management cuts frontline staffing, or it can be difficult to get supervisors to help out on the floor. The company is very reactive. Staff will let them know their concerns, but a lot of the time nothing changes until something goes wrong or hits the fan. The company has a fantastic vision and does some amazing work with the patients. I just think the frontline staff can use a lot more appreciation other than staff cuts and burnout. I also think the front line should get paid on holidays no matter what day the holiday falls on. They are taking time away from their family to make sure the hospital is safe and running smoothly. Plenty facilities and hospitals offer incentives to those working holidays, nights, and weekends.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Behavior technician 5 salaries reported	$17.60 per hour
Registered nurse 10 salaries reported	$36.15 per hour
Dietitian 4 salaries reported	$62,000 per year
Therapist 3 salaries reported	$64,333 per year
Psychotherapist 6 salaries reported	$52,167 per year

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