WV LTC CNAs Unite

smartassmommy · Nov 20, 2015

With all the excitement over patient loads in hospitals, long term care is getting overlooked. CNAs in LTC are being overlooked and overworked, resulting in resident care suffering. While no one is diminishing the plight of the overworked hospital nurse, long term care aides are being hit with increasing levels of care and higher resident loads all the time. We need to petition OHFLAC to regulate the resident load assigned to each aide. Numbers alone won't cut it, level of care needs to be taken into account as well.

CNAs working in LTC are run until they burn out or get injured. We are then replaced by newer CNAs. It is a vicious cycle caused by for profit health care and lack of regulation of workload. As a whole, those of us who choose this line of work need to speak up for our residents and ourselves. I am a CNA in WV working at a facility that feels it is ok if someone calls off to run a unit that has a 50+ residents on it with four aides.

Even with our full staff of five, every work day I leave feeling like I was not able to give my residents the level of care they deserve. I know I am not the only one who feels this way.

I want to petition OHFLAC to better regulate the resident load a facility can assign to one aide. In order to do this, I need your help. Nurses and CNAs both are over assigned. Please leave suggestions in the comments, the petition will be written soon. When it's done, a link will be added.

We all deserve better working in long term care. Most of all our residents deserve the best possible care. We work hard to give them that each day, but our facilities often make that impossible. For profit health care will never end this cycle of overwork, burn out or injure, then replace, unless they are forced to by regulation. Residents before profits!

If you work in long term care in WV, please post points you would like to see in new regulations. The Mountain State has the opportunity to lead the US in a positive way. Let us hope that OHFLAC hears and takes the message to heart.