God I feel awful.

[pumpkinking]

Caring for 10+ residents for 8 hours a day, keeping them all on schedule, making sure everyone is clean, dry and fed, is not light work. Add to that the demands of supervisors, family members, fellow nursing staff and a handful of residents who are less than nice, you get a utterly depleted person at the end of the day once in a while. A resident passed today, and now I feel awful for being short with her a few days ago. Here was this woman on her death bed, and I got annoyed with her for wanting to be toileted. Ugh. Granted she wasn't in her right mind, she couldn't walk, and she was a new admit that I hadn't dealt with before, but I can just remember thinking, " Really?! I have a nurse up my ass for breathing treatments, a fall risk whose chair alarm is going off, and you want me to take you to pee!? If I take you,you'll probably just sit there and do absolutely nothing, I'll fall behind and **** will hit the proverbial fan." Ugh I feel like an a-hole. Just one of those days.

[virgo,student nurse, CNA]

I agree doing all that work is alot, but you are upset because you care. If you didn't care about the resident passing, you would not have said all that you did.

It is tough being a caregiver, but remember some one does appreciate you. They may not be able to express it, or may be short and nasty, but believe me one of the cares that you care. Hope your days are better.

[interceptinglight, CNA]

Your job is hard enough without you being hard on yourself. Give yourself a huge massive break !!!! No one is Superman, OK? No one can leap tall....patients...in a single bound..... Just know that you did your best, even if your best was not up to your own personal standard. The next day you might be really jazzed because you did it all with a smile on your face and maybe one of those sweet faces you just took care of will give you a grateful smile. The rewards of your job are plenty, sometimes you just have to look hard for them !!!