Should medication aides exist?

It isnt a perfect situation to say the least. ALF residents are suppose to be A&Ox3, so for them to have a medication aide is acceptable, because this is the alternative to them still being at home. LTC residents, many of which are on more than 10 different meds, are victims of greed, period! The solution is the same one we use here in Tn. We have NURSES performing nursing skills, and not a 4 week trained individual. Maybe give them 2 more weeks of training and they can do the assessments too, and all of us nurses can just go on home! If you have read the med aide threads, then you have heard of the med aide giving digoxin to a pt with a pulse of 50, and when told by the nurse that she would start giving her own cardiac meds from then on, the med aide responded, "what does digoxin have to do with the heart?". You dont have to wait til med aides kill a bunch of people to be on the right side. As a nurse, you have a vested interest in protecting your skills. If they can prove that our job can be done with little training, then maybe they are paying us too much as well. The medication aide is a position created by those who have no regard for patients or nurses, not out of need, but out of greed!