Following Policy

 The Heavy Weight of "Immediate Jeopardy"

     

      It's been so long since I have posted on my blog. I have journaled on other platforms, like ChatGPT, Gemini, and my Emotions app. My blog, however, is my artistic therapy and creative writing outlet, my space to bring visual and written palpability to my emotions, experiences, reality, my burdens and my delights.

       It's been a challenging past few months. Advocacy work with Pasadena City College has been grueling, looong, wearisome and utterly discouraging at most points. There is some hope on the horizon, but more time and effort needs to be applied, sort of like strategically placing your fingernails around a large, juicy whitehead and squeezing just so...till it bursts! White pus squirts out and then more pressure is applied, but a little more gently, moving your fingers around just so...to get every last bit of pus OUT. Why is popping zits sooo satisfying? There's a whole show about a doctor who specializes in it and video games and all sorts of stuff that focuses on this most gratifying activity - squeezing white pus from a mildly infected skin follicle. Yuck.

    Satisfaction has not been a part of my life for a long time. Mid-April brought the shocking and maddening and terrifying revelation that the Root Cause Analysis of the sentinel event on 4 North was woefully, shamefully, and pathetically negligent. When CDPH finally came to review the event, they requested footage the 4th day they were onsite and to the "big wigs'" horror, safety rounds were not being done properly and were NOT done on the patient who hung himself. Had they been done properly, no doubt they could've saved him. The fact that these terrible, unsafe rounds were still being done the same way 3 months later and when the AN1 was questioned about it, he defended himself saying that, "That's the way we do it here." And then, "Hand me your badge and keys.You are on an immediate suspension." Despite the union's advocacy for him, he will NOT be coming back because he has always been lazy and selfish - totally incompetent and dishonest for as long as anyone has known him. But the truth is that the newer manager knew that and never did anything about him. She also knew about the safety rounds - how could she not have?  - and never bothered to check the cameras. Despite my question at the debrief, "How did the patient have access to his belt?!?" and the strong reassurance that "a full review will be done" - it absolutely, totally was NOT done. The CNO and the manager - with their horribly lazy and uninformed processes caused the "Immediate Jeopardy" warning that now hangs over the psych hospital's head. All the employees are stressed.

    Then, stupid is as stupid does, the very next day we were not in immediate jeopardy but "soon to possibly be" in jeopardy, 4 East was short staffed and I did an ADO. I didn't know it at the time, and would later find out, when I was asking the charge nurse about staffing and letting him know I would probably filing an ADO, two patients were having sex in the psych ICU. That would be seen - on camera! - two days later. My manager, hysterically overreacting, now makes staff stay in the hall but is vague - "be where the patients are." But, if half the patients are in their rooms sleeping or watching TV, and the other half are in the dayroom, then where should I be?!

STUPID.

And yes, I've pushed back in writing and on videotape in a meeting, all the while working on my 196 page rebuttal to the UCLA lawyer's refutation of my PERB charge. However, and this is the good news, the PERB decided that on the simple facts of the allegations, there is enough evidence to open a case and have a hearing. So, I will be ready with 196 pages of documentation and probably more to add to my case.

And yet, in the heaviness and discouragement I feel a surge of praise pushing forward; "Thank you God for the instruments, the passive aggressive CNO and the manipulative and hateful manager, because they are tools in your hands to shape me and refine me and to cultivate greater humility and longsuffering. I have learned much greater self control over my temper and my emotions and this is a very, very good outcome." Praise and yielding, submitting to God's hand of loving and precise discipline will bring hope and comfort and joy in the days to come. Those dark rain clouds over the desert will pour out rain  - lots of life-giving rain which waters the earth and fills the land with activating drops of wet pressure to bring forth seeds and flowers and the fruits of joy, and peace and delight. 

I will stand in that barren desert, in the dark, and I will raise my hands and worship my sweet, loving and wise Jesus. I will cry out for a tender heart of mercy and kindness to those who seek my harm and who attempt to dismiss and silence me. Whatever God wants spoken, shouted, sowed, brought forth, dug in, WILL HAPPEN. Hallelujah and Amen.

"The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands." Psalm 133:8

Praise you, Lord GOD Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. All praise and honor and glory belongs to you and you alone.