Does all of Canada use Nursing Attendants

In a nutshell no. It depends on the hospital and the units involved. Postpartum and gynie are usually RN and PN. Other units have them usually on day shifts, minimal patient contact, kind of more like a general service aide, restocking, bed making, showering patients.

Most NAs are found in LTC and Continuing Care or the dreaded care in the community.

I am in Ontario and none of the hospitals in my area use any aides or psws(personal support workers). The hospital i work in everyone does their own cares.

No, no care attendants here either in my neck of the woods. Hospitals here are primarily RN staffed with a few RPN's thrown in, RN's and RPN's do their own cares. LTC hires aides.

By care in the community do you mean like our UK social care - help with washes, meals on wheels (a meal delivery service to the elderly) and the sort?

Is your comment "dreaded" because it's a poor service, very hard pushed and/or horrible to work for?? Just curious, as a future Canadian resident (paperwork in the pipeline.)

The units ive done clinicals on, all the patient care was done by the RN's...no PSW or RPN's at all

Working in the community as a personal support worker includes helping with bathing, dressing, getting a simple meal ready,some light housework, and providing relief for caregivers to go out for a while, sometimes a few hours.

It is not always dreaded, I guess it depends on who you work for. I did it for 8 years before I was a nurse and I loved doing it. The agency I worked for treated me very well and most of my clients treated me like a member of the family.

There are some really good care in the community programmes for the handicapped and seniors. The main problems are the workload and the unreasonable demands of family members. I remember hearing about one wife who felt that the support worker should be putting on her pressure hose (she was fully capable of doing so) while the worker was there assisting her husband. She made that poor guy's life a misery.

Also the majority of the agencies that provide support workers are not unionized so the wages tend to be on the low side. Staff turnover (at least here in AB) is very high due to the wages, hours, distances to be covered on a shift, and families.

Meals on Wheels exist here as well. Most home visits are like you and lori described, help with washing, dressing, seeing that meds are taken care of.

I've known people who have loved it for a while and then it takes one family to destroy it.

That's what I loved about the agency I worked for. If we reported families asking us to inappropriate duties or provide care for others in the home they would deal with them pretty promptly. I am sure it was a liability issue for them, if something happened while we were doing something for a person that was not a client of the agency we would not be covered. Mileage was not an issue with the PSWs because we got compensated for our driving time.

Sounds exactly like here, thanks for taking the time to explain.