A nursing home with no nurses.

Nurses Activism

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Hi, I'm new here and I just wanted to get your imput on my situation. I'm a cma, or med-aid. If you've never had the pleasure of working with one of us before I'll give you a quick rundown on what most med-aids do. We generally pass medication, do treatments, check blood-sugars and all those other little time suckers. Generally we try and make a nurses life easier.

I work in a very small facility with 5 full time residents and up to 7 respite patients. As you might imagine our turnover rate is a nightmare, and I'm responsible for the paperwork and everything that comes with it on up to 7 addmissions and discharges a week, and I work nights! We only have 3 Nurses on staff and those aren't going to be replaced when they leave.

Essentially the managment is attempting to run a nursing home without actually having any nurses, now we do have access to nurses from another building on site, but actually getting ahold of one to come over is very hit and miss.

any thoughts or suggestions?

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Specializes in Emergency, ICU.

Sure! Get out of there and report them to the state department of health.

If you are not a licensed nurse, you should not be doing admission assessments if that's what the paperwork is. It's beyond your scope of practice and puts you at great risk.

Refuse to do it if you don't want to leave. That's a nurse's job because they hold the license to do it and have the knowledge to back it up.

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses.com

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Why are you doing admissions and discharges? Isn't that illegal? :o

My country has introduced something called "Med-assists". Their scope of practice states clearly that they can only assist an independent patient with their medications eg: helping a visually impaired person make sure they are taking the right pills or opening a bottle for a patient who doesn't have the strength etc yet I've heard stories that they are being forced to do wayyyy beyond that and it's just wrong.

The point of my ramble is that your putting yourself and the patients at risk. Download a copy of your states scope of practice and show it to management and report them if they continue to sweep your concerns under the rug.

That or move on and find a better facility.

Good luck

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Specializes in Med/Surg, LTACH, LTC, Home Health.

Are they transitioning into a Personal Care Home???

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And so it begins! The beginning of the end of the nursing profession. Doomed to go the way of high button shoes.

And nursing is caving in without even firing a shot.

Again, I will say, go to the people who will be impacted by, "make believe nurses". Get this out to the public and the news.

Has anyone even mentioning replacing teachers in our public schools, with inlicensed teachers aides? Why not? Because teachers have always belonged to strong unions, and stick together. And they go righ to the parents when they are being bullied by their administration to shortchange the kids .

Yet, no one ever died because they could not do long division, diagram a sentence, or recite the Gettysburg Address. But patients all over are hurting by having unlicensed, uneducated, individuals, taking over the professional practice of RNs. This is a no brainer. Get out there and make a big stink. Make the facility cringe with the embarrassment of what they are trying to pull on the patients/residents, that they are legally required to provide the appropriate professional staff. It is a non negotiable item. Period.

Call the papers and the news stations. Give em hell!

JMHO and my NY $0.02

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN

Somewhere in the PACNW

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Nursing homes are just weird... I don't understand them at all. I've been saying since I graduated, that you could run a nursing home with CMAs!

The admission paper work can be tricky and really is a tilt on how one would look at it. I mean, all I hear over and over again in my LPN to RN transition program is an LPN is not allowed to do an admission assessment, but the fact of the matter is that LPNs all over the country regularly do an admission assessment. The nursing homes justify this by saying it is later signed off by an RN at some point down the road. While I understand the practice within nursing, I'm not sure how to apply it to an unlicensed team member. Eh what ever.

As far as discharges, I see things all over the place worse than a CMA doing a dischage. Heck, I'd rather a CMA who was with me throughout my stay discharge me than an LN I've never seen before.

From my own experience in LTC (which has been minimal) i think a nursing home could be well ran with minimal nurses on staff and mostly CMAs/QMAs. There are times when a nurse should really be present for those less stable and more complex patients. But it seems like so much of LTC is the dreaded med pass and simple dressing changes any 5th grader could do. Anything beyond a simple PO/SQ med pass and 5th grader style dressing change should probably require a nurse. But then the annoying part of that, is the nurse is probably not much more well off if they haven't had exposure to the more advanced care pt load.

Please don't flame me. This is just a personal opinion. I do recognize the need for nurses with complex patients, but things like assisted living that really are JUST assisted living (which i know is so rare)... do we really need nurses?

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Oh- PS....

I would like to point out that in every LTC facility that was dominated by RNs always had reasonable pt loads (

Every LTC facility that was dominated by LPNs always had unreasonable pt loads ( >= 18 ) and 1 CNA for the full 18. Perhaps I'd have stayed an LPN and worked in LTC if the nursing world wasn't so unfairly balanced.

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Oh- PS....

I would like to point out that in every LTC facility that was dominated by RNs always had reasonable pt loads (

Every LTC facility that was dominated by LPNs always had unreasonable pt loads (>= 18) and 1 CNA for the full 18. Perhaps I'd have stayed an LPN and worked in LTC if the nursing world wasn't so unfairly balanced.

I've worked in three LTC facilities, and have never heard of that kind of ratio. (CNA here) I wish the nurses had that kind of patient load!! To the nurses who work in LTC with 20 patients or more, I salute you.

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There are over 740,000 allnurses.com members.

Nursing is the largest health care "profession" in the USA.

Just think what we could do if we ALL stood together?!

Amazing things.

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.
There are over 740,000 allnurses.com members.

Nursing is the largest health care "profession" in the USA.

Just think what we could do if we ALL stood together?!

Amazing things.

I think that's called a union. It seems to me, the most vocal ppl I hear are against it.

I wonder if a hospital I recently spent time at would have tried to save their LPNs their jobs had there been a nurse's union. Everyone seemed so upset at the slight towards their fellow nurses. However, maybe if there had been a union it would have followed the ANA's example and refused admission to their LPN coworkers. Le sigh...

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

I've worked in three LTC facilities, and have never heard of that kind of ratio. (CNA here) I wish the nurses had that kind of patient load!! To the nurses who work in LTC with 20 patients or more, I salute you.

There were no CNA's unless u count the CMA/QMA (is there a difference?). These RNs were expected to perform very regular assessments on their clients and thus the med pass was relegated to certified personnel rather than licensed personnel

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Oh and to reiterate; I think it is very possible to run a nursing home with minimal nurses

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