Did you like being a CNA?

Nursing Students CNA/MA

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I started my 1st CNA job at a hospital on a busy floor. I have an avg. of 13 patients on my shift, ranges from (10-16). I find it very difficult to time manage. I don't dislike the work itself, however I feel overwhelmed with how much work must get done, from washing, turning patients, to moving them, charting, vitals, etc....There really is no time to do anything else. I feel i could possibly make a mistake or injure my back with how the staffing ratio's are done. If it was like 5-8 patients that would be a more appropriate level in my opinion. How do current CNA's manage to handle this type of stress. I have to give all CNA's credit.

Specializes in hospice.
I think it should be made a requirement that in order to be admitted into an RN program you need to have worked as a CNA. PA's, Paramedics and other health professionals have similar requirements, not sure why RNs would be any different.

:yes: I totally agree with you. Don't you think a lot of the impaction in nursing programs would be relieved if this were a requirement? I think it would, to quote my husband, "weed out the unserious." But I also think much of the nurse vs. aide attitude (from both sides) many of us have experienced and heard about would be alleviated. Not all to be sure, but I think it might make a big difference.

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Pretty late response, I suppose, but 13 is very common. I have 15 residents, 11 being non ambulatory/total dependent. I feel as if I never stop moving. I have no idea what the federal or state ratio is, but our census is at a rapid increase. I'm sure I'll be reaching the maximum soon enough.

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If I had 5-8. I wouldn't know what to do with myself. Haha

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If I had 5-8. I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

Maybe have the time to provide adequate care, take an actual lunch break, get to know your patients a little, properly stock stuff instead of doing it on the fly, and actually have time to occasionally sit down and rest for a minute?

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Maybe have the time to provide adequate care, take an actual lunch break, get to know your patients a little, properly stock stuff instead of doing it on the fly, and actually have time to occasionally sit down and rest for a minute?

I agree with funtimes. The amount of money your paid as a CNA is not worth the amount of work you do in most places. I think that's why there's such a high turnover rate. Making anywhere from 8-15/hour is not worth injuring your spine over, if you damage your spinal cord chances are it's permanent. I'm sure there are many jobs that pay the same wage that don't involve dangerous working conditions. The idea of nursing is to actually spend time with your patients and provide adequate care, not to run around and worry about getting tasks done on time. Getting a break, resting is practically unheard of. Admins/managers care more concerned about money/profit then their actual employees. They don't actually have to work on the floor with patients so what do they know? Then there's nurses who treat there CNA's badly on top of everything you already have to deal with. Also many nurses themselves are quitting the bedside and looking for alternatives b/c they can't stand the politics and patient overload. All I can say is, your going to lose a lot of talent/employees if you value the dollar over a person. There come's a breaking point when a person/cna/rn will say it's not worth it, I don't care anymore. I quit

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I'm a CNA/PCT at a local hospital with 12 hour shifts, and its the hardest most exhausting job I've ever worked, but I enjoy the patient care and work with a great staff of nurses.

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I work in a hospital where my patient load is often no more than 3 to 4 patients on day shift, and 4 to 5 on evenings. I know that seems like a dream but there are days that I don't get a lunch break because we have so many 2x assist or needy patients. We run 3 CNAs on days, 2 on evenings, and 1 on nights. We often have to help in the ER and we do many other things like running activities because the activity director thinks sitting in her office and diddling on her phone is more important than doing her job, but I digress.

What makes a job assignment difficult other than the number of patients is the needs of the patients. The other day, it was just 1 other CNA and I and she did nothing with her 4 patients other than feebly attempting to bathe them while I was on the go from the moment I hit the floor after report until I took 15 minutes for lunch. My patients were heavy care and I took the time to make sure they were presentable and comfortable. For us, those two things ensure we still have a job; for other people in other facilities, it's quite different.

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I would be honored to have 4-5 patients. Imagine the people that have 10-20 patients, or even 30. Your director i bet wouldn't even spend a day doing the type of work a CNA does. He/She would quit if they were asked to do some CNA work to see what it's like. That's the world we live in. Your being asked to work 12+ hours with in some cases, no break time. This is a prime example of an employer that values patients over your well-being. In healthcare, nowadays it's all about the patient's satisfaction and not about you or what you think. We are easily replaceable. The job market is tight and an employer will not value your contribution since they know they can always find sum1 else to do the dirty/grunt work. When a pt. tells me thatnkyou for what you do, or a family member gives me a thankyou card, i find that indeed i have purpose and i am indeed doing my best for them. I never cur corners regardless of how behind on my tasks i am, you cannot risk a patient's safety b/c you'll risk going to jail or losing your license/cert. Even as a RN, you will face the same obstacles. Like the CNA, you are easily replaceable since the job market is tight. You will do less grunt work as a RN, but as a RN the job is more mentally straining

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I sure didn't. I had the same kind of ratios as the OP in cardiac telemetry, and it was awful. Just because it's worse somewhere else doesn't mean OP's situation isn't bad. I can tell you with absolute certainty that vitals were being faked on that floor. I stood out as slow because I didn't do that, but I had to find ways to cut corners elsewhere because there was no way to get everything done that was expected. I could not count on the other aide because she was as swamped as I was, nor the nurses, and that was a combination of bad attitude from some and being pushed take more patients so they could cut a nurse from the floor.

For what it's worth, I conceded defeat after 7 months and now work for a hospice company. I usually work inpatient, and my biggest load has been 14, but that's with two nurses and I've found my hospice co-workers much readier to jump in and help with care. On nights, I am the only CNA, so they don't have much choice if there's a x2 assist, but I've met very few who mind helping. Completely different attitude from what I dealt with at the hospital. I've also done in-home care and sitting where I'm 1:1, and while that is obviously easier to handle, there's a reason people need sitters, and they can run you ragged too.

OP, being a CNA is a hard job. Some places make it harder. Look around though, there may be something better out there. To be totally honest, I feel blessed to be where I am because I know it's a rare find.

are you really comparing 50 vs 13?

excuse me?

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are you really comparing 50 vs 13?

excuse me?

Obviously 50 residents in LTC is way too many under any circumstances. Having said that its not simply a case of more patients equals more work.

When I worked day shift in LTC I typically had 6-8 residents but it was an enormous amount of work because I had to shower at least one and sometimes 2 of them, I had to wash up, dress and get the rest of them into a WC and to the dining room where I had to physical feed some of them, I had to toilet them and answer call lights as needed, do vitals, do suppositories and enemas as needed, put them back to bed then get them back up for activities(which usually meant cleaning them up as most were incontinent), get them to the dining room for lunch, feed them, all while chasing chair and bed alarms, plus assisting in dressing changes, keeping track of everyones I/O, charting everything I did.

It was a huge amount of work and day shift was easily the hardest of the 3 shifts. When I worked the NOC shift I usually had 3 times as many residents, but I wasn't doing all those things, mainly just turning and changing incontinent residents and answering call lights.

A hospital is totally different in that there isn't the set routine you have in LTC. I still think LTC is harder starting out, but its not really accurate to compare based solely on number of patients/residents. Everyone in a hospital is sick, depending on the unit many of your patients are complete train wrecks. Chest tubes, telemetry, several IV lines, feeding tubes, ostomies, surgical drains, NG tubes to suction, O2 devices, prosthetic devices, tracheostomies, EEG wires, foleys, fecal incontinence bags, dressings, CPAP, Bipap, LVADs, braces, and on and on. I might see EVERY one of the mentioned things on patients in ONE shift, in some cases many of them on ONE patient I have to get up to the toilet every 45 minutes while trying to get everything else done. A hospital job is no bed of roses either and you have to deal with many arrogant borderline hostile RNs(and the occasional surgeon), rather than the one RN or LPN you deal with in LTC.

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Obviously 50 residents in LTC is way too many under any circumstances. Having said that its not simply a case of more patients equals more work.

When I worked day shift in LTC I typically had 6-8 residents but it was an enormous amount of work because I had to shower at least one and sometimes 2 of them, I had to wash up, dress and get the rest of them into a WC and to the dining room where I had to physical feed some of them, I had to toilet them and answer call lights as needed, do vitals, do suppositories and enemas as needed, put them back to bed then get them back up for activities(which usually meant cleaning them up as most were incontinent), get them to the dining room for lunch, feed them, all while chasing chair and bed alarms, plus assisting in dressing changes, keeping track of everyones I/O, charting everything I did.

It was a huge amount of work and day shift was easily the hardest of the 3 shifts. When I worked the NOC shift I usually had 3 times as many residents, but I wasn't doing all those things, mainly just turning and changing incontinent residents and answering call lights.

A hospital is totally different in that there isn't the set routine you have in LTC. I still think LTC is harder starting out, but its not really accurate to compare based solely on number of patients/residents. Everyone in a hospital is sick, depending on the unit many of your patients are complete train wrecks. Chest tubes, telemetry, several IV lines, feeding tubes, ostomies, surgical drains, NG tubes to suction, O2 devices, prosthetic devices, tracheostomies, EEG wires, foleys, fecal incontinence bags, dressings, CPAP, Bipap, LVADs, braces, and on and on. I might see EVERY one of the mentioned things on patients in ONE shift, in some cases many of them on ONE patient I have to get up to the toilet every 45 minutes while trying to get everything else done. A hospital job is no bed of roses either and you have to deal with many arrogant borderline hostile RNs(and the occasional surgeon), rather than the one RN or LPN you deal with in LTC.

speaking from my immediate experience. not only was i supposed to do around 16 vitals, i had to do ADLs on every single patient(none of my 50 were independent) ... and i had to start at 4 am to get 8 people up every morning. how ridiculous is waking up someone at 4 but thats what i had to do to barely get done by time the next shift comes on.

if i had 13 residents to care for i would be quite happy. infact when i was working rehab i had around 13-15 during the day and it was quite fun and managable.

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Specializes in hospice.

You're not thinking about acuity in your calculation. And I said that just because one situation is worse doesn't mean the other isn't bad.

How about instead of having a "who's got it worse" peeing contest, we figure out how to advocate for ourselves and for people who need care, and refuse to accept ratios like 50:1. If no one consented to work in those conditions, they couldn't exist. Plus, I think that the public needs to know more. I think anyone who heard about a ratio like that would recognize it as insanity, and if we got the word out, things might change.

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