There are so many things us grizzly, seasoned CNA's would love to tell you! Feel free to add any, but here are my two cents:
1. Please don't complain that you don't make that much. Guess what, neither do we! Don't believe those colleges that charge you thousands to become an aide and then guarantee you job placement. Sure you will get a job. Just not a good paying one.
2. So you wanna work at a hospital huh? No way you would ever go to the "stinky nursing home?" Come back in six months and let's see where you are.
3. Those CNA's don't even put square corners on the bed! Believe me, once you've been a CNA for years you don't go step by step through the skills. You have to get your patients looking(and smelling) good. There's time to make the bed look good (sometimes), but not "bounce a quarter off it" good.
4. Everyone is so mean, right? Get used to it. The stress of having to clean, bathe, change, feed, and anything else that comes to mind for 15-20 patients will put a little bit of stress on ya. Use these magic words: "Can I help with anything?" Even if you're done with your work, just ask. We'll love you for it.
Being a CNA might not be what you expect, but I guarantee that once you see the smile on a residents face or have one kiss you and tell you they love you it will be worth it. Sometimes we are all they have left in the world and it is our duty, no matter how frustrating it might be, to put on a happy face every day and BE NICE! It might be your grandmother, your mother, or even YOU one day!
This brings back memories of talking to the DON during my early days as a CNA in a nursing home. She would give me a blank stare.
That was before I discovered the DON's office door at that facility is revolving. The owners of that facility basically used the DON position as a scapegoat for issues caused by their criminal short staffing and would regularly terminate the DON and get another one. The ADON was smart enough to not want the position, but during a survey held between DONs they got her too. Fired.
My advice to new CNAs: Tough it out. This is your job; this is your practice and how you do it is up to you. I don't care if your coworkers are nasty, lazy, abusive, mean, whatever. What will bother nasty coworkers the most is if you are excellent at your job. They truly, truly hate that. And your RNs and patients will love you for it.
Best of both worlds! Sure, you won't make many friends there, but the ones you do will be awesome and who the heck cares if the sleds don't like you?
After some time, you will gain experience and a hospital will hire you. Or you will find you like your LTC facility and stay there.
I now work as a CNA on a hospital Med Surg floor. It's still hard work, but it is like Club Med compared to the nursing home!
Specializes in Mental Health; Medical-Surgical/Trauma.
This brings back memories of talking to the DON during my early days as a CNA in a nursing home. She would give me a blank stare.
That was before I discovered the DON's office door at that facility is revolving. The owners of that facility basically used the DON position as a scapegoat for issues caused by their criminal short staffing and would regularly terminate the DON and get another one. The ADON was smart enough to not want the position, but during a survey held between DONs they got her too. Fired.
My advice to new CNAs: Tough it out. This is your job; this is your practice and how you do it is up to you. I don't care if your coworkers are nasty, lazy, abusive, mean, whatever. What will bother nasty coworkers the most is if you are excellent at your job. They truly, truly hate that. And your RNs and patients will love you for it.
Best of both worlds! Sure, you won't make many friends there, but the ones you do will be awesome and who the heck cares if the sleds don't like you?
After some time, you will gain experience and a hospital will hire you. Or you will find you like your LTC facility and stay there.
I now work as a CNA on a hospital Med Surg floor. It's still hard work, but it is like Club Med compared to the nursing home!
Good luck!
Fantastic advice about being great at one's job and the rewards!
This brings back memories of talking to the DON during my early days as a CNA in a nursing home. She would give me a blank stare.
That was before I discovered the DON's office door at that facility is revolving. The owners of that facility basically used the DON position as a scapegoat for issues caused by their criminal short staffing and would regularly terminate the DON and get another one. The ADON was smart enough to not want the position, but during a survey held between DONs they got her too. Fired.
I have worked somewhere like this, too. Then, at my current facility, our old DON was famous for telling you to "suck it up" if you came to her about anything. And I mean REAL issues, like resident neglect, etc. We have a new one now and she is always telling us that she wants feedback, because she wants to improve our work environment and it can't be done without knowing what needs to be improved. At any rate, I figure, if I tell management about a real problem, and nothing gets done about it, it becomes their problem.
If you're a new aide and one of your coworkers tells you, "Oh, you have the hard group! Here, I'll trade you, you can have this one. It's easier" .... THEY ARE LYING. Don't do it. It's a trap. DO NOT DO IT.
You get a grace period when you're actually new. Once you've been there a few months, you're not new anymore. If I help you out (take one of your showers because you can't get the man to do it) RECIPROCATE! Otherwise I'll be behind all night while you're sitting on your butt because I did your work. I don't want to have to call you out, but I will.
The thing I find funny about CNA's wanting to work in a hospital so bad because they don't want to do "dirty" work is that even though a hospital has less "dirty" work than a nursing home there is still plenty of it. There isn't a CNA job where you won't have your fair share of "dirty" work.
Yep! And they think that the nursing home is "gross". But I'll tell you what - I encountered far, far more infectious diseases and the like at the hospital than I ever did in an LTC facility. I'm not too bothered by most contagious things, as they're fairly simple to avoid contracting...but the one thing that scares me and that I encountered several times at the hospital and never at an LTC is tuberculosis. IT IS AIRBORNE. IT IS TERRIFYING. And more gross to me than any poop.
You might have fewer briefs to change at a hospital (but no matter what you think, you WILL still have to change briefs), but to make up for it, you will have more isolation rooms. And some of your patients will be from those nursing homes you didn't want to work at.
Not trying to say working at a hospital is bad, it just is what it is - a bunch of sick people. There are sick people at the nursing home, too. (Though at a nursing home, many of them aren't really SICK, they're just old. ) Despite what some people on these boards make it sound like, it's not all kittens and puppies and rainbows at a hospital. CNA work is dirty work, in general, wherever you work.
This brings back memories of talking to the DON during my early days as a CNA in a nursing home. She would give me a blank stare.
That was before I discovered the DON's office door at that facility is revolving. The owners of that facility basically used the DON position as a scapegoat for issues caused by their criminal short staffing and would regularly terminate the DON and get another one. The ADON was smart enough to not want the position, but during a survey held between DONs they got her too. Fired.
My advice to new CNAs: Tough it out. This is your job; this is your practice and how you do it is up to you. I don't care if your coworkers are nasty, lazy, abusive, mean, whatever. What will bother nasty coworkers the most is if you are excellent at your job. They truly, truly hate that. And your RNs and patients will love you for it.
Best of both worlds! Sure, you won't make many friends there, but the ones you do will be awesome and who the heck cares if the sleds don't like you?
After some time, you will gain experience and a hospital will hire you. Or you will find you like your LTC facility and stay there.
I now work as a CNA on a hospital Med Surg floor. It's still hard work, but it is like Club Med compared to the nursing home!
I can appreciate a little sarcasm as much as the next guy. But I would like to point out that not all of us CNA's in training see this career path through rose colored glasses.
There is a difference between reading about something and actually doing it. Giving a mock bed bath or changing an occupied bed with a classmate posing as the patient is vastly different when it's a real patient. I think before the reality occurs, there is a tendancy to place expectations upon how things are going to be. Of course those expectations are quickly smashed to pieces.
There's also a level of maturity that comes into play. I had my own business and burned myself out trying to save if during the recession. I did save it, but I didn't care anymore. So I sold it and now I'm doing this. And I understand that the pay is not great, but I've found from working for myself that not great pay is better than not being able to pay yourself at all.
My first day of clinicals the supervisor came and asked if we students had any problems with the staff. I said that everyone was great and helpful, but there seemed to be a little tension only for the reason that we're new and don't want to screw up on our first day of clinicals and the staff is looking at us hoping we don't screw up because that will make their day harder.
It comes down to maturity, life experience, perspective and realistic expectations. If I keep my side of the street clean, then I have nothing to worry about.
One thing I heard all the time as a CNA student is that if a facility smells, then avoid working at that place. I don't get it. Smells are unavoidable when you have that many people using the bathroom so much, especially when all the lingering odors have a nice long hallway to drift around in. It's like walking past the porta-potties at a county fair or the bathrooms at the mall. Lots of people peeing= smells. I once took a science class where we all had to pee in a cup for a lab and within 5 minutes the school's bathroom smelled like a barn. On top of that in a nursing home you have a bunch of people taking meds that make their pee smell funky. When the unit is total care, you can add incontinence, an unwillingness to drink enough water (or all their liquids are thick so they won't drink ANY water and I don't blame them), and an inability/unwillingness to open their legs during peri care, and the smell gets worse. It doesn't mean the place is a hellhole.
If every resident you walk by smells like they've been sitting in their pee all day, maybe avoid that facility. But smells in general are just unavoidable.
2ndyearstudent, CNA
382 Posts
This brings back memories of talking to the DON during my early days as a CNA in a nursing home. She would give me a blank stare.
That was before I discovered the DON's office door at that facility is revolving. The owners of that facility basically used the DON position as a scapegoat for issues caused by their criminal short staffing and would regularly terminate the DON and get another one. The ADON was smart enough to not want the position, but during a survey held between DONs they got her too. Fired.
My advice to new CNAs: Tough it out. This is your job; this is your practice and how you do it is up to you. I don't care if your coworkers are nasty, lazy, abusive, mean, whatever. What will bother nasty coworkers the most is if you are excellent at your job. They truly, truly hate that. And your RNs and patients will love you for it.
Best of both worlds! Sure, you won't make many friends there, but the ones you do will be awesome and who the heck cares if the sleds don't like you?
After some time, you will gain experience and a hospital will hire you. Or you will find you like your LTC facility and stay there.
I now work as a CNA on a hospital Med Surg floor. It's still hard work, but it is like Club Med compared to the nursing home!
Good luck!