Did the title catch your attention? Good, I was hoping it would.
I've seen people talk about this attitude on allnurses quite a bit, and I find the reactions fascinating. I'm amazed at the passion, care and professionalism of the nurses on this board and really about every nurse I've ever met.
BUT, everyone-from the most seasoned nurse to the student- knows that nursing is changing and will probably continue to change dramatically over the years to come. There are CNAs and MAs who seem to have an increasing role in the healthcare system and nurses themselves have more responsibility (all the charting etc.) and demanding jobs as new diseases, new medicines and standards of care make their way into our lives.
My question is, do you think their should be a change in what nurses do? Will there come a time when basic hygiene and certain other tasks often done by nurses in the past will be the responsibility of CNAs and others in similar roles? Would this be a good thing for nurses? Is there really anything wrong with nurses who feel that four years of education + all of their other demands and responsibilities should mean that they shouldn't have to do these tasks?
I as well was sharpening my claws when I read your title. i am currently a nursing student who is a CNA. When I worked in a LTC facility I actually had LPNs answer call lights and come out and tell me that a resident needs changing or to be put on the bed pan. After telling me this, while I was with another resident, that nurse went and sat at the desk, put her feet up, and read a magazine.:angryfire This is ridiculous! No RN or LPN is above basic care. I completely agree that CNAs are assistants and the nurse's responsibility. I have had the opposite experience with other nurses at that LTC facility I just wish more were like the latter. Great topic!
When i graduate I will remember my CNA days. I just wish more of the nurses out there were aides at one time. Maybe there opinions about basic care would be different. Also it is good to share these opinions with my calssmates that don't have the experience of being an aide. Maybe by hearing some of my stories they will be that latter nurse after graduation.
Im not above performing personal care however I think it does somewhat distract the patients view of our ability to asses, and assist in their care plans. if a patient sees us changing their briefs and then admin IVs they tend to doubt our ability
I have to disagree, some of my most appreciative patients have been the ones that I cleaned up when the CNA was busy. The intelligent ones know which nurses care, and the ones that are really out of it don't give a damn who does what anyway.
Don't look for excuses to get out of caring for a patient. From what I have witnessed at work, it is not that nurses think they are too good to do something, most of the time they are just down right lazy.
Lazy nurses are my pet peeve at work! And believe me it doesn't take long to spot them.
Please, all you young nurses out there... NEVER let a patient lie in their own waste. How would you like your Mom or Dad to have to do that??
I don't have a problem with cleaning up patients. What I do have a problem with is non-stop diarrhea with multiple cleanups where you can't get any other work done because as soon as you do clean them up they go again. After the third cleanup in less than an hour, I start to get really frustrated.
I wish more hospitals would use these flexible plastic fecal bags which are really great for preventing skin breakdown, not to mention saving the staff a lot of time and trouble. But I've only seen these fecal bags used in only one ICU unit.
They constantly give the patients all of these drugs that cause non-stop diarrhea, but they don't give you effective tools to deal with it while you've got a million other things to do. And then they wonder why people don't want to do cleanups, and why they can't keep CNA's.
To me, the problem isn't cleanups themselves but the vast multitude of cleanups that have to be done. I'm sorry but to me, that's what burns you out on poop more than anything else. It's like bailing out the ocean, at times.
As a SN working all over the hospital as a US and NA and sometimes both at the same time, mostly nights and weekends, I'd have to say initiative. Just that attitude of leaning forward. If something needs doing, do it right away. If nothing's happening, get a start on whatever is scheduled as early as acceptable (I can start vitals and fingersticks an hour early) and when that's done (or while you're waiting) empty, tidy, restock, answer call bells, answer the phone, generate spare forms to fill up charts, learn something new, volunteer to get lunch for everyone, enter orders, file whatever's laying in the printer tray, calibrate glucometers and download the data, you know. And of course tend to the patients. They'll never leave you with nothing to do. I love working 12s. The time just flies. I love the freedom of being allowed to do whatever needs doing and being far enough ahead that nobody feels they have to supervise me. In the process, I'm getting to know my resources (which I'll need to know before my first day as a RN): everyone who works nights in the hospital, how to make things happen fast, the policies and procedures and needs of all the support shops, where everything is. I can exercise my critical thinking and communication skills to the max even if I don't get to actually perform certain tasks. And all the overhead that comes with a new job--learning the people, resources, policies--is already taken care of, so I'll be able to spend my preceptorship actually learning my job. I'm always aware that when I become a RN I'll be tied to charting and meds and only get to work with a small number of the patients on any given unit, so I'm enjoying life as a NA while it lasts. Well enough for now, just wanted to say that NA is a very powerful and flexible role, one you can really express yourself in, and you and your pts will get out of it what you put into it and then some. Have fun!
I as well was sharpening my claws when I read your title. i am currently a nursing student who is a CNA. When I worked in a LTC facility I actually had LPNs answer call lights and come out and tell me that a resident needs changing or to be put on the bed pan. After telling me this, while I was with another resident, that nurse went and sat at the desk, put her feet up, and read a magazine.:angryfire .
This is the way it always is in LTC. I just assumed that it was the way things were done, so I just always ran as fast as I could to go tend to the patient for my nurse. It never occurred to me she would do it. Wouldnt that be nice!
I liked to call my last place of employment "Butts Are Us".
I figured that a CNA in LTC changes as many as 12,000 depends a year. Practice makes perfect!
I think that already that basic hygiene and certain other tasks are the responsibility of CNAs, at least the ones I work with. However, I am not above doing those tasks if I'm with a patient that needs those things ONLY if there's nothing of higher priority (monitoring drip, timed med etc).
The day that a nurse refuses to do a task because she/he's trained for so much more is the day that nurse becomes nothing more than a selfish employee
:balloons: I so agree with you!! I have seen Nurses say that they dont do such and such. I ask them who are they here for? themselves or the patient?
What happened to unselfish service and doing whatever it takes to care for the need?
Back to the original question to this thread. I do believe that nursing is changing and that nurses will have to take a higher level of responsibilities. As a NA, and a pretty lousey tech (know nothing), RNs have to take an educational lead on the workplace to compensate for the educational deficit we are experiencing. Maybe we can't change the system, but maybe we can make it work.
The other night I overheard an RN tell a patient it wasn't her job to help him up to the bathroom so he could move his bowels and that the aide was on break and he would have to wait until she came back so she could help him. :angryfire I was right outside the door and could not believe my ears. I had just been reading this thread, too, earlier in the day before I came in to work. This RN told the patient she was too busy doing her rounds, but I saw how much time she had spent yakking and griping about work with another nurse. :gandalf: This is one of the nurses I work with who won't even fill her patient's ice bags if she can get an aide to do it. I work with 3 nurses who do this kind of thing all the time. I work full time nights on a ortho/neuro/general surgery floor and I have had it up to my ears with my coworker's laziness, rudeness and very poor treatment of LPN's and aides. Not to mention that I get dumped on a lot, too. When I float to other floors I experience culture shock cuz it's so different. Aides and LPN's hate our floor because of these 3 nurses. In 3 weeks I start a float position and I cannot wait.
Sorry to rant on like this! It's nice to read this thread and see that there are so many other nurses who see every aspect of patient care as "their job".
Back to the original question to this thread. I do believe that nursing is changing and that nurses will have to take a higher level of responsibilities. As a NA, and a pretty lousey tech (know nothing), RNs have to take an educational lead on the workplace to compensate for the educational deficit we are experiencing. Maybe we can't change the system, but maybe we can make it work.
Chadash, I firmly believe that you are going to be a great nurse!!
On the other hand...ever had to break sterile proceedure to answer a phone call and have it turn out to be that a patient needs a bedpan, and your aide is on break, and the other aide can't cover it because she's on break, too? Ever had to go refill a water pitcher to give an 0700 med at the end of your shift, while two-shift's worth of aides give "report" on who's dating whom?
Weekends I make almost triple what a starting aide makes. Weekdays I still make double what a fairly experienced one gets. I figure that entails a degree of responsibility, and I try to do right by my aides. Most of the aides I work with a very smart, hard-working, and dedicated, and I'm damned proud when one or another of them says she's glad to work with me. I help, I listen, and I respect them. On the other hand, if we're just looking to criticize, I'm sure we've all seen aides who'd be glad to let us do our work and theirs, too.
One of the nurses I've learned a lot from is not well-loved by the aides, but she's right--you have to delegate. I'm younger, I move quicker, and my back is stronger than hers, but she's a better nurse than I am, and I'm old enough to recognize that the time will come for me, too, when I'll have to rely a lot more on my brain than my brawn.
I think the majority of nurses agree that it is all there duties to do basic patient care. But what I see a lot of times is nurses seeming put out, or unavailable when it comes to helping to do ADL's. And I notice the class structure at work probably more acutely being a CNA, that there are jobs nurses due and jobs CNAs do.
:angryfire I was right outside the door and could not believe my ears. I had just been reading this thread, too, earlier in the day before I came in to work. This RN told the patient she was too busy doing her rounds, but I saw how much time she had spent yakking and griping about work with another nurse. :gandalf: This is one of the nurses I work with who won't even fill her patient's ice bags if she can get an aide to do it. I work with 3 nurses who do this kind of thing all the time. I work full time nights on a ortho/neuro/general surgery floor and I have had it up to my ears with my coworker's laziness, rudeness and very poor treatment of LPN's and aides. Not to mention that I get dumped on a lot, too. When I float to other floors I experience culture shock cuz it's so different. Aides and LPN's hate our floor because of these 3 nurses. In 3 weeks I start a float position and I cannot wait. 
It's nice to read this thread and see that there are so many other nurses who see every aspect of patient care as "their job".
pooh83
5 Posts
I as well was sharpening my claws when I read your title. i am currently a nursing student who is a CNA. When I worked in a LTC facility I actually had LPNs answer call lights and come out and tell me that a resident needs changing or to be put on the bed pan. After telling me this, while I was with another resident, that nurse went and sat at the desk, put her feet up, and read a magazine.:angryfire This is ridiculous! No RN or LPN is above basic care. I completely agree that CNAs are assistants and the nurse's responsibility. I have had the opposite experience with other nurses at that LTC facility I just wish more were like the latter. Great topic!
When i graduate I will remember my CNA days. I just wish more of the nurses out there were aides at one time. Maybe there opinions about basic care would be different. Also it is good to share these opinions with my calssmates that don't have the experience of being an aide. Maybe by hearing some of my stories they will be that latter nurse after graduation.