registered nurse

patient care technician

registered nurse - pediatrics

technician

registered nurse - nicu

Valley Childrens Healthcare

Petty behavior. Zero productivity. All in a day's work. This place has gone downhill. When I first started working here, it was a good place to work, but over the years I had witnessed a downward spiral in the company culture and mentality. The patient has lost its status as highest priority. There is no change here, just a commitment to the same ol' same ol'. Common sense? Extinct here. Management is going insane by telling employees that things are going to get better by doing the same thing over and over again. Then what happens? Things get worse! There exists a culture of doing the same thing over and over again with the same results. The workload has increased with not enough resources, and management won't budge on hiring more employees to ease this burden. As a result, current employees feel overworked and overstressed.

There exists obvious favoritism in this organization. The weakest links and unqualified get hired and recognized while the strongest performers get punished, disrespected and underappreciated. Teamwork is like a foreign language in this organization. Employees are generally selfish and do not know how to work together. There is no sense of community or support here, rather diverted blame and no accountability. Employees are more concerned with being lazy, incompetent, childish, spiteful and apathetic. Basically, they go to work for the paycheck. The atmosphere of incessant chatter, ear-piercing laughter, constant absenteeism, distractions such as singing/humming, foot-tapping/stomping, gum-snapping, phone vibrating and personal phone calls on work time is not conducive to productivity and does not create camaraderie. 

Bad hires have contributed to a very hostile work environment and have lost this organization a lot of money. The lack of change in this place only perpetuates this and chases off the best workers. This place has suffered a decline, and as a result, has a very long road ahead of it.

Management needs to provide much better leadership. They need to stop their abuse of power, stop the micromanagement, eliminate the condescending behavior and get rid of the status quo. Become agents of change in order to create a culture of change for the better. LISTEN to the employees' concerns. When there is a problem, be proactive in getting to the root of it, and fix it. Do not ignore the problem or cover it up while letting it get worse. Do not fix what isn't broken. For example, if a certain software was functioning properly, do not get new software that is not user friendly and causes productivity problems. Stop the competing priorities. The highest priority is the patient. After all, that is why hospitals exist. Management and HR need to make much better hires, and provide better onboarding and training to new hires. If there are employees that need improvement, implement an effective performance improvement plan. If they cannot or will not improve after all efforts have been made, do not retain them. Stop the reactive mentality and become much more proactive within reason. If they want the best and brightest, then look for them and hire them. Once they hire them, recognize their accomplishments and make positive and extensive efforts to retain them, not create an unacceptable and intolerable work environment that very few "A" players will tolerate. Don't create or perpetuate a defeatist culture by settling for someone without the proper credentials, experience, maturity and quality just for the sake of quickly filling a position. That only causes cancers to infect the entire organization by lowering the morale.

Drawing blood on children and infants is not easy. However, it is rewarding to know you are a big part of helping this child get better. I have learned patience when dealing with children, and how a calming voice with a smile can help soothe the older ones. Compassion is a must to work in this field with small children and babies. It fills your heart when some of your patients not only know who you are, but like to see you, and request you for all tests. Management at the time played favorits big time. While being an excellent person outside of the work place, things were opposite with in. Management has changed now, so it wouldn't be the same. She is still a great person though. A vast majority of my co-workers were easy to get along with. However, I have nothing againts no one. Keep in mind, there are all different types of personalities and some are not compatable with others. The hardest part of this job is responding to code blues and watch a child die before your eyes. Never is that an easy thing to deal with, but it's what comes with working in a hospital. You don't get used to it, but you learn to accept that its a part of the life cycle. It's still fun to see smiles on some of these little faces. It's great to interact with them as well.

The hospital is just a business. The Human Resources Department does not care that you have concerns affecting you within the organization. The equipment is old and the hospital is unwilling to buy new equipment or supplies needed to better care for the patients and families. They ask for donations everywhere but the hire ups are being rewarded with money that should be used for the improvement of the hospital and for the families. 
They give you a raise according to how your peers and manager evaluate you and that’s rarely 3% even if you go above and beyond. 
This hospital is the lowest paying hospital to its employees. I.e during orientation, they claim to match your 403b at 6% when in reality they only match 60% of the first 6% you invest into your 403b. As a brand new employee working full time, you accrue maybe 6hrs of PTO per pay period. 
And when other hospitals have multiple staff to prep a patient for surgery, this hospital has 2 supporting staff members for the entire department, the nurse is basically doing the job of 3 people. 

Valley Childrens is a good hospital and has good specialty departments. Working with children is wonderful!  Unfortunately, the Urgent Care in Bakersfield has gone downhill since Valley Children’s bought it from former Pedi Center owners. Valley Children’s poorly manages the Urgent care. Wait times on average are 3-4 hours. It’s not because of being busy it’s due to being run poorly. 
It’s great place for people who don’t like to work but want to get paid.  The only place you will get paid and never get in trouble for: taking off 3-4 hours per shift , socializing and making personal calls while on the clock while ignoring patients, being rude to the customers. As a medical assistant you can be as insubordinate to the MD as you want and will never get in trouble.
It’s unfortunate it’s gotten so bad. It’s not fair for patients.
 If the above sounds like something you value, the Bakersfield urgent care is the place for you.

Truly the only thing that makes this job worth it is the coworkers and friends you make throughout the hospital. Not the worst place to work but certainly not the best. The management truly is what makes this job suck. Passive aggressive leadership from leads to supervisors to managers. Management is poorly trained and has no idea what their employees actually do on a daily basis. They are incredibly unhelpful which often leaves you figuring out issues on your own because who else are you going to ask?  Management has very obvious favorites and makes for a very cliquey work environment. The whole system is very unorganized and you can see it from the doctors down to the housekeeping. The benefits are great and the pto policy is decent but there is almost no room to move up in the department which leaves you stuck in the same position until you grow tired of it.

I did the anesthesia set up in the Imaging Department for the CT's, MRI's, Fluoro, Nuc Med, and some times even sedation patients for the Sedation Team.

I learned how to turn on/off anesthesia machine, how to fill the machine with anesthetic gases, how to check gas tanks for O2, CO2. I learned all of the instruments the doctors would use for anesthesia and I had to have the proper equipment set up for each case and I also had to learn the different personalities of each person I worked with.

My co-workers were great, they were all nurses and anesthesiologists so I had a lot of valuable information that came my way every day. 

Hardest part of the job was that I was the only one in the Radiology department that worked in my position, so I had a lot on my hands, but I always got the job done.

The most enjoyable part of the job was definitely the children.


Children's Hospital's security department pays better than private security outfits and the benefits are great, but the Director, manager, has no clue how to  operate the security department, mainly because the geniuses in charge of the hospital prefer to hire inexperienced people that have a masters degree over qualified security experience. The manager and supervisors will write you up or plain out fire you for petty things and it's impossible to get a fair evaluation because they don't want to pay anyone the extra pay raise because of budget no matter how hard you try. Management encourages tattle tales to  stir up animosities and cause drama in the department causing a hostile work environment.

Workload for inpatient can get very hectic, especially during Fall-Winter. Management isn't on it about staffing so many times you're left to do it all yourself. But you won't get this type of pediatric experience anywhere else in the Valley. A pro is that it is very easy to move around to various floors/areas. Also, this is a teaching hospital, so most staff are use to helping and training. Also, the CE's offered for free here are amazing.

While the pay is very good, there is no system in place for advancement. All supervisors are generally hired from outside the organization and internal promotions are extremely rare. 

Independent thought and critical thinking are discouraged and all decisions are made by management. There is a culture of division between manager and subordinates. Employee suggestions are generally unwelcome unless they come from a supervisor or above.

There is a great deal of backstabbing that goes on in the Security department at the hospital.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Great collaboration between Medical Staff and Administration. Strong organizational commitment to patient safety and quality. Dedicated to being the employer of choice for the region. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
This is a pediatric organization committed to serving all children regardless of their ability to pay. Some patient situations are extreme circumstances and that can be stressful to the care team 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Highly collaborative and patient -centered 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Challenging , busy,  days can be long

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Registered nurse 44 salaries reported	$60.69 per hour
Patient care technician 24 salaries reported	$33.80 per hour
Registered nurse - pediatrics 9 salaries reported	$56.63 per hour
Technician 13 salaries reported	$28.16 per hour
Registered nurse - nicu 41 salaries reported	$54.64 per hour

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