Does your ICU have CNA's?

[Rose44]

In my ICU we have lost two full time CNA's and I have just found out they are not replacing them. We are a very large ICU with high acuity patients. Administration is telling me that most ICU's don't have CNA's anymore. I find that hard to believe and was curious to hear if this is true. If you could also let me know what state you work in this will help me identify id this is a national problem.

[guest769224]

Thirty seconds to turn? I must've been doing it wrong all these years! Taking the pillow out, boosting the patient, turning on the opposite side, repositioning the four pillows and ensuring that the patient is comfortable takes a whole lot more than thirty seconds!

Ruby, fine, a few minutes or so. Still worth it to get the extra help vs attempting on your own. Way to nitpick.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Ruby, fine, a few minutes or so. Still worth it to get the extra help vs attempting on your own. Way to nitpick.

You are correct -- well worth it to get the extra help vs. doing it on your own. But it truly ticks people off to be asked to help for "thirty seconds" and then to get into the room and figure out it's not just 30 seconds but several minutes. And it's poor planning to only allow thirty seconds for a turn.

[Bluebolt]

Also in reference to the constant turning of patients, when families or patients see you enter the room they suddenly have a list of things that are direly important you perform at that moment. So in the case that you are already juggling 5 things you need to complete that "30" second turn can turn into a snowball effect of more to do list. Usually this new list is ADL type things that an assistant could perform. If they were the one turning or helping turn the patient you could efficiently delegate those tasks and you could get back to your RN only tasks you still need to complete. When you have no CNA at all then you constantly find your to do list unmanageable and actually decrease patient and family satisfaction because they can see you drowning in tasks. Just my opinion and experience.

[mgfam]

Georgia- 20 beds medical ICU

2 techs during the day

And 1 or 2 techs in nights

[Lennonninja, MSN, APRN, NP]

Having a CNA would be a dream in my 30 bed MICU. We occasionally hire students, but I've only ever seen a few of them actually DOING things. Frequently they are sitting at the desk and playing on their phones. They wouldn't be allowed to check blood sugars, but they could help patients eat or even just helping with turns and code browns would be so amazing. One night I spent greater than 75% of my night cleaning up poop from my patients and my buddies patients so there was no way I could be monitoring my patients while elbow deep in c diff.