"Off with Your Head!"

Work has been so incredibly stressful lately – the week before vacation my stomach was in knots, my neck, shoulders and back were killing me and then I left for vacation and was completely relaxed the entire time and then I came back and two weeks later my boss was fired. And it's been an extremely interesting week. 

In January the owner of the company told the DON to fire our DSC, then the existing VP was demoted to DSC in the SLC office – a new VP was hired, then our social worker quit to go back to school, our DSC quit, a new one was hired, another company bought us and we're in the midst of this merger, our new social worker quit, our lead marketer quit and our DON got fired. The new DSC is running the SLC office but she has not a clue what she's doing and is in way over her head. It's turned into a soap opera. The VP is hanging out at the SLC office to train the DCS and both of them are yelling and swearing at everyone in the mean time – they're really good at criticizing, belittling and condemning in front of the entire office and before they have all the facts. Their mentality seems to be that if they haven't got you either in tears or second-guessing yourself before the day is out, then they have failed. I don't know what their objective is but it is not cool – it's getting rather ugly, every time you go into the office it's like you're walking on eggshells. You stay at the office long enough to get done only what needs to be done and then you leave as soon as possible – otherwise you risk getting yelled at just because you're there. “Off with Your Head!”

What was great about our DON was that he had our backs and he was the buffer between us, the owner and the VP – he ran the gauntlet for us. He trusted us, we trusted him – he backed us up and empowered us to make decisions, think outside the box and bend the rules as necessary to get the job done. Now it's completely opposite.

One of the aids had hurt her back and has been unable to work, this is the second week now – she's cleared for light duty but the VP wont let her come back, she told her to go home – and we don't know when she'll be allowed back. So in the mean time, I'm covering her patients and mine – never mind that the semester started up again and I have classes to prepare for. Last week I worked over 60 hours. I wish I could say no but I can't – for one thing there is no one else available and I have bills to pay, we are in the midst of hiring a couple of new people though – I don't know when they start or if they'll make it through orientation (we had one quit before she even started and another quit as soon as she got her first patient).

There are seven aids plus me, well eight actually. Two are PRN and currently unavailable, four are part-time and have minimal availability, one is full-time but is out on R&R, I'm technically part-time because I'm in school but I work full-time hours and the other aid is our TC and she's been filling in as needed but then that leaves no one in the office – we've been borrowing a HomeHealth aid to make up the difference but she's super busy with her own patients. Two of our aids have been banned from various facilities – we've been told that if we send them again the facility will pull our patients and put them with a different hospice. I don't think they'll actually fire any of us just because then we'd get unemployment but what they will do is change our status to PRN and then only give us one or two patients a week. Some facilities have flat out refused to give us referrals or work with us again because our DON got fired.

I think thats a little extreme – I think you should try to work with the new DCS before saying “No I'm not working with you” but obviously I'm only getting part of the story, so, what's really going on here? What is the underlying issue? Part of me wants to stick it to the man and quit and the other part wants to see if I can work for these women – as it currently stands though I do not trust nor do I particularly like either one of them. But I'm not a quitter and I'm not one to just turn tail and run when the going gets tough – I'm not the type to say I can only work for one person and one person only. Though truth be told, the DON was the main reason me and others stayed – now my residents are the reason. We're going through a trial period where we're seeing if this is going to work, and if not, then we'll seek opportunities else where.