Dealing with co-workers

[Hazel11]

Sorry-very long post!!

I work as a CNA in a nursing facility. I have been there for almost two years and haven't had any problems with the ladies I work with (other CNAs) and we work well together as a team. Two new girls have started working with us recently. The one is very hard-working, honest and a team player. The newest girl I am not sure about, even though we continue to help her out with her work and be respectful.

Whenever there are new aides on the unit, my co-workers and I try our best to help them out with patient care and getting them oriented to our unit (I work on a dementia unit). I remember when I was new and scared, so I try to make the girls feel comfortable.

I ended up finding out the first girl complained to HR that our unit was "cliquey." This was the first we had all heard of this situation, and the rest of the aides and I couldn't understand where this was coming from. (The girl ended up apologizing to us and explaining that she was new and didn't feel like she belonged, even though we talked to her and helped her out whenever she needed it.) So now word is going around about our unit and we are starting to get a reputation, even though our residents really do appreciate us, as well as their families and the nurses/nursing supervisors we work with.

We found out later that the newest girl went to HR with more complaints. Some of these included: "We don't give the residents any rights, we don't sit down and talk with the residents, we take our residents to bed too early, and that we are not very nice to them." All of this is not true-everyone is hardworking, professional and kind. This is coming out of left field, and my unit coordinator was very upset that the Director of Nursing called her up and asked what was going on with her unit. This has never happened to us before. My co-workers and I can all say that we try our best to treat our residents with the utmost respect and provide them with the care they need. Sometimes the residents don't feel like having a bath, so we nicely encourage them to come take a bath with us and that they would be nice and clean for the next day. Once we encourage our residents to take the baths, they are okay with it and actually enjoy it. And sometimes our residents WANT to go to bed early-we never force any resident to do what they don't want to do. I have learned with the dementia residents it is important to encourage-not force-them to eat their dinner, take their baths, and socialize with others.

I am just kind of confused about what to do with this situation. I feel like the aides need to have a discussion with our unit coordinator about this because now we (the aides) constantly feel like whenever there is a problem, that someone is not going to use the chain of command and talk to either HR or the DON about things they have problems with on our unit. Like I said before, everyone on our unit has built up a great reputation of providing great care for our dementia residents, but now I feel like it is ruined because of a misunderstanding. I'm just in shock. Any comments would be appreciated.