Review of Walnut Creek Skilled Nursing & Rehab
I was a former employee for this company from December 2017 to December 2018.
Therefore; the statement made in this review is my honest review while working for this company for 12 months.
First I would like to mention this company and the entire Generations Healthcare had a class action lawsuit against them for underpaying their employees and preventing them from taking meal breaks.
Second; The company owes me in back pay of $11,286 in back pay, however I am no longer qualified to this amount so I am making this review of what it’s like to work at a Generations Healthcare facility.
During the day shift; the CNA's would have 10 to 12 total care patients or even more if they are understaffed.
By the time its 12 pm; its time for the patients lunch, and other nursing staff would prevent me from taking lunch because I would have to pass out the trays and feed patients; therefore missing my meal breaks.
LVN's on the other hand; they are also busy with 18 to 22 patients even more depending on their staffing levels.
The facility is so short that they beg CNA's to work doubles nearly every single day, and sometimes it gets so busy that I would work 15 1/2 hours straight without a single break.
The facility would beg their staff to work overtime, but in the end, they end up illegally shaving off times off your pay to save them on costs. The fact that the company as a whole was involved in an employment class action lawsuit shows how much they truly care of their employees.
Charge nurses even threatened to write me up for refusing to unclog a toilet because fixing toilets is never a part of a nursing skill. In fact; unclogging a toilet was never part of the job description that I signed when I got hired by Walnut Creek Skilled Nursing & Rehab. Not only was I expected to unclog a toilet, I was also expected to empty the trash as a housekeeper during the evening shift, in addition to caring for as much as 8 to 12 patients, doing vitals, and charting activities of daily living.
With understaffing, one should question the safety of the patients Walnut Creek Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation.
Although they say patient safety is their top priority as a facility; it is extremely difficult to maintain safety at this facility because
1. Its difficult to find help with patients, and a CNA is forced to work on a total care patient who is having difficulties turning.
2. It very difficult to get the phones answered after 4pm because all nurses are busy on the floor passing out medications.
3. The facility over work their employees to a point they would want to quit.
Here are some critical safety occurrences I’ve experienced working at the facility.
1. A confused patient continues to get out of bed, and is considered a high fall risk. To help with the safety of the patient; the nursing staff decided it was safer for him to be in the wheel chair and park him in front of one nursing stations. The problem is; the patient got up off the chair, and got fell off the chair and onto the floor. The issue was, there was nobody at the nursing station because all nurses and aides were busy doing patient care or passing medications. Had the facility maintained an aid to watch over the patient, this patient would not have fallen off the wheelchair.
2. A resident at the long term care aspirated while eating lunch in their room. Patient turned blue and was taken to the hospital. Report says after few days, the patient never recovered from this incident. The critical error the facility made was the failure to provide a 1 to 1 feeding regiment to prevent from aspirating.
3. A patient from the rehabilitation side of the facility was admitted. The patient needed to use the bathroom. However; since the facility was short staffed; nursing report says the patient got up to the bathroom by himself with an unsteady gait. By the time nursing staff reached the patient, it was reported that the patient had fallen and hit his head on the sink and was found on the ground with blood on the floor. Critical error the facility have made was the failure to bring in a 1 to 1 patient intervention to prevent an accident from occurring. At best, the facility failed to put a bed alert on the patient’s bed to notify staff of an unsafe behavior, which may have prevented the accident. Either way, staffing levels were to blame for the accident that had occurred on that day.
4. A resident at the long term care had escaped the facility, and nearly caused one of their nursing assistant to get injured from a motor vehicle due to the unsafe actions of the patient. The critical error the facility have made is due to allowing eloping patients to wonder off freely, and not having a more secured system to prevent patients from running away from the facility.
The first 3 critically major facility accidents would have been prevented by having adequate staffing levels to ensure safe patient handling, and prevent falls, injuries, or even fatalities at the facility or outside.
Also, a family member was placed at a Generations Healthcare facility in a nearby different city. That facility had a COVID 19 outbreak earlier this year, and a family member contracted this fatal disease after living at a Generations Healthcare for 2 years. Since I never worked at that particular facility; I am sure that due to the staffing levels, and heavy work loads of all nursing staff; the failure to maintain proper hand hygiene or even donning and doffing PPE’s in between patient visits was the root cause of their COVID 19 outbreak. With my family member being a high risk patient, this COVID 19 infection became a horrible and fatal exposure.
Don’t get me wrong, the reviews about how caring the nurses are; is true and accurate because all the nurses do care about your families, and loved ones. However, when a facility purposely understaff their facilities in order to save on costs, makes it extremely difficult for nurses to carry on their duty of caring for the sick, and keeping them safe.
