Thursday, February 7, 2013

What Do Employees Have To Say About Working At The Arizona State Hospital? www.glassdoor.com offers a pretty clear answer to this question. 

The following data is available on a major job referencing resource, Glassdoor.com, and will come up as one the first sites offered via a standard google search specific to The Arizona State Hospital. That's precisely how I came upon it, and it is disturbing, because no matter where I look, I find more and more evidence in support of the fact that ASH operates far below the expectations of Arizona's citizens in every imaginable way. In my own right as an ASH patient, I learned the hard way that staff at all levels of employ willfully subject ASH patients to graphic forms of abuse; and further, that the administrative staff at ASH will go well out of their way in order to suppress any flow of information that might expose the substandard conditions there, including highly illegal abuse and related negligence on the part of ASH's senior clinical staff. But I was not in a position, as a patient, to learn much about the experiences of ASH staff. Yet, with this newest source of input (glassdoor.com), we see just one more illustration of how poorly Arizona's sole long term public mental health facility is managed, in this case, from the perspective of ASH staff. It is ridiculously insulting to the conscience to realize that ASH is in such a state of crisis, and still it goes on. ASH is a public medical facility, charged with caring for our state's most at risk adults, and each and every employee there is supported by the citizens of Arizona. There is absolutely no justification for this, none whatsoever, and it simply must be addressed.  

Glassdoor.com: An inside look at jobs and companies.
Arizona State Hospital Reviews
 www.azdhs.gov | Phoenix , AZ
Reviews are posted anonymously by employees.

Employees are “Dissatisfied”   2.0 

Company Rating Distribution

Very Satisfied
0
Satisfied
0
Neutral – OK
0
Dissatisfied
1
Very Dissatisfied
0

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12  Arizona State Hospital Reviews
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Know a good labor attorney before starting work here!

 Current  

Pros – The patients and the people you work directly with. The ability to help make a difference for patients and their families... the opportunities you get to help open up for them is inspiring to be around! Some really wonderful and heroic people quietly come into work everyday and you get to be a part of that.
Cons – Incompetent and corrupt upper management make it unnecessarily dangerous and stressful. Overpaid and unnecessary positions are created for under-qualified people thanks to the unchecked croneyism from the top administration. Meanwhile direct care staff are kept to dangerous minimums to save money. EEOC complaints, harassment issues, abuse of power problems keep the labor union, investigators and labor attorneys busy.
Advice to Senior Management – The top management needs tobe replaced by professionals who are competent for the job and adhere to ethical standards. Start cleaning house by getting rid of the double-dippers that had to retire from other state agencies for personnel issues. Eliminating your wasteful spending would go a long way to reducing our budget without affecting patient welfare or public safety.
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"Unchecked croneyism… Top management needs to be replaced by professionals who adhere to ethical standards… Dangerous,  stressful…." 

"Know a good labor lawyer before starting to work here." 

FACT: If the staff at The Arizona State Hospital are unhappy, afraid for their safety, stressed out over the ineptitude of their superiors, or otherwise discontent in their positions, the ultimate consequences of this reality land squarely on the shoulders of the patients. The patients at ASH are seriously mentally ill, and as such, they are highly vulnerable and very susceptible to trauma, and they are complex, and legitimately needful of quality care if there is any hope of recovery and wellness. In this same context, obviously, many of the patients in ASH are extremely difficult to work with, and the direct care workers there (nurses and technicians) are the ones who work most closely with patients. The administrators at ASH, on the other hand, spend no time working directly with patients. And by engaging in unlawful abuse of established employment standards, as described in the above data, the direct service staff workers are intimidated to the point that they have no clear idea about what the right thing to do is. It is really that bad. 

FRIGHTENED  JULY 12, 2012

I FINALLY HAD TO QUIT. MY REG UNIT WAS GOOD BUT THEY KEPT FLOATING ME OVER TO THE BAD CIVIL UNIT. I AND OTHERS KEPT GETTING ATTACKED IT'S LIKE OPEN SEASON ON TECHS THERE NOW AND THEY DO NOTHING. TOO MUCH FLASHBACKS AND TERROR FOR ME TO STAY. SORRY TO ABANDON YOU -THE FRIENDS THAT I LEFT. THERE ISN'T ENOUGH STAFF AND NO MORE SECURITY GUARDS TO HELP.

LAST WEEK ANOTHER AWOL AND DIDN'T HE TRY TO KILL HIS DAD BEFORE GOING TO ASH?? WHERE ARE THE STAFF AND GUARDS?    (END OF PASSAGE)

The above staff report was posted at:     

       www.crazycorycorner.weebly.com 
For those who are not aware, and to the best of my knowledge, this site was created by ASH supervisor Cory Nelson not long after he was hired to maintain the mismanaged affairs at ASH (and in my opinion, he's done a great job of doing just that). As the date indicates, staff concerns about these changes at Nelson's behest began emerging almost as soon as the effects arose in terms of threats to staff safety. 

Thanks to the data provided by Glassdoor.com, at least some of the greater public today know that at least some of the staff at ASH are far less than content. They are afraid for their safety, they are dissatisfied and disturbed by the conduct of their supervisors, and they are afraid of losing their jobs to the point that they cannot safely voice their concerns even their most trusted peers. It is a classic case, in fact, of employees not knowing who to trust, and having well reasoned concerns that they will be blacklisted by administration should they so much as whisper disagreement with the conduct of senior clinical staff or the wrongful policies of people like ASH supervisor Cory Nelson. This is a deadly combination when you consider the fact that ASH is a hospital, and that its patients are mentally disabled and highly vulnerable to abuse. These sorts of conditions are something that our nation chose to reject years ago, when the mental hospitals of old were cleaned out or shut down altogether, and congressional enactments such as the Americans With Disabilities were established, all in order to ensure that America's disabled citizens have access to the same standards of care as everybody else, and to rid our society of the discriminative practices that have for so long denied seriously mentally ill persons fundamentally humane care and treatment. 

I attest to the fact that the atmosphere within the confines of ASH is literally so bizarre that I often felt as though I had entered a third world country, and yet it is not the patients who create this atmosphere, it is- rather- those members of staff who are incapable of abiding by established codes of decency and applicable provisions of law and policy. In my experience, such staff include primary care physicians such as Dr. Pervaiz Ahkter and Dr. Ruby Ramos-Roxas, senior clinical staff such as former ASH chief medical officer Dr. Steven Dingle, and administrative officials such as ASH chief operating officer, Donna "you are sooo busted!" Noriega, and even ASH's assigned legal counsel, Joel "the mortician" RuddAnd to the extent that there are definitely at least a few good people working at ASH, those few cannot even do their jobs well because of a demented hierarchy that trickles down from the highest administrative offices there at ASH and in ADHS. Of course, these sorts of shortcomings are common to state managed bureaucracies, and we all know this, be it the department of motor vehicles, and so on. But ASH is a hospital, first and foremost, and the citizens placed there as patients are not to be subject to such deficiencies. That saidanyone of reasonable intelligence and conscience would be shocked to witness the things I witnessed and experienced firsthand during my 13 months of hospitalization at ASH. Things that mainstream society has every reason to believe are no longer occurrent today; matters relating to humane care, patient dignity, and common decency; and issues arising under some of the most powerful edicts of contemporary law. 

Trust me, oh reader. In terms of the manner in which ASH's administrators mismanage the affairs of that facility, the conditions at ASH are little different from places such as the DMV, circa 1975, and the only reason these conditions exist derives of the fact that ASH's patient-clients are seriously mentally disabled, and effectively out of sight- out of mind to the greater public. ASH administrators rely on this reality 100% as they carry on day after day with their blatantly irresponsible conduct, and they will do just about anything to maintain the status quo as it stands at this time.

How many times do I need to clarify the details about the dismally substandard conditions and practices at The Arizona State Hospital? How many places do I need to go to in order to verify my allegations in this context? The data is overwhelming, and the only thing allowing these conditions to continue is the graphically inept conduct of ASH's administrators and senior clinicians, with the full support of the Arizona
Department of Health Services/Behavioral Health Services. This is one of the state's largest agencies, with thousands of employees, some of whom are among Arizona's highest paid public employees. The administrative mismanagement at ASH, and the role of AHS's senior clinicians in willfully contributing to the related presence of patient abuse, is Arizona's dirtiest secret today

PLEASE TAKE ACTION TODAY IN DEFENSE OF RIGHTS AND CARE NEEDS OF THE HIGHLY VULNERABLE PATIENT COMMUNITY AT THE ARIZONA STATE HOSPITAL. PLEASE SEE MY DECEMBER 19, 2012, "RESOURCE IDEAS" ARTICLE AND DETERMINE THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION FOR YOU TO TAKE. DO NOT ALLOW FOR ANYTHING LESS THAN IMMEDIATE RESPONSE TO YOUR EXPRESSED CONCERNS. AND STAND FOREWARNED: THE ONE'S AT THE ARIZONA STATE HOSPITAL AND IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES WHO ARE MOST MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR RESOLVING THESE ISSUES WILL BULLSHIT YOU TO THE EDGE OF THE EARTH. I IMPLORE YOU TO NOT PUT UP WITH IT.   PLEASE ACT NOWFOR AS STATED, THE PATIENTS AT ASH ARE IN CRISIS, AND NOTHING SHORT OF DIRECT ACTION WILL LEAD TO THE CHANGES SO CRITICALLY NEEDED AT THIS TIME. I ATTEST TO THESE THINGS. THE PATIENT ABUSE AT ASH IS CRIMINAL, INHUMANE, AND ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE THIS DAY IN AGE. 
paoloreed@gmail.com




       


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I would really love input of any kind from anybody with any interest whatsoever in the issues that I am sharing in this blog. I mean it, anybody, for I will be the first one to admit that I may be inaccurately depicting certain aspects of the conditions
at ASH, and anonymous comments are fine. In any case, I am more than willing to value anybody's feelings about my writing, and I assure you that I will not intentionally exploit or otherwise abuse your right to express yourself as you deem fit. This topic is far, far too important for anything less. Thank you, whoever you are. Peace and Frogs.