a.m. care

Next week we are going from caring for one patient to caring for two patients. I am very excited for this since I feel like I get in the way 95% of the time after meds are passed. Going into med-surg, we will start to have possibly three patients. Were you required to do all of the a.m. care (bathing, bed changing, etc..) for your patients once you had multiple patients? At what point did they have the nurse's aid help you so you could get all of your work done? !

In our program they don't want us to pass off anything on the CNA, so we have to do it all whenever possible and delegate when we have priorities that require it.

The first two semesters of my program we did patient cares too. Now in the third semester we focus on the RN role, and don't do many cares. We do them when we have a chance, but they are not required. However, it is good to know how to get it all done including cares, because there will not always be a CNA at your beckon call. This is where organization and prioritization come in big time. I find making a timeline helpful in organizing my day. I usually have a "brain" sheet that includes spots for info about all my patients. At the beginning of my shift I jot down all the important info like med times, appointments, code status,allergies, priority assessments, etc At the top is where I put the timeline for all of my patients. If you don't do this as of now, it might be worth considering to help you organize your day. Hope this helps! Good Luck!

It's not like I mind doing the AM care but they are thinking about not even letting us delegate any other duties out to anyone. It can get overwhelming.

I already have a timeline that I use during the day that help me out alot. I don't even know what I'd do if I didn't stay organized!

Thanks guys!

Finding time to do baths for all your patients is something the RNs on our floor are working on now. Our main hospital is getting rid of CNAs so the RNs have total patient care. I hear them talking all the time about how they "still havn't gotten to a bedbath on room 2" or such. I suppose its good to learn that now when they expect us to be slow.

Some institutions aren't lucky enough to have NA's help with morning care, leaving the RN's to do it themselves. Throughout nursing school I cared for one patient except for in my adult med-surg rotation, where they gave us the option to have 2 patients closer to the end (which of course I did, many of the other students chose not to, especially on our last day bc they wanted an "easy, last clinical day" ). As a student, we were responsible for everything, including AM care. We didn't even focus on delegation until I did my preceptorship but even then they rarely had an NA/tech working the days I precepted so that left myself and the RN I was following to do all of the care ourselves, but we only had 3 patients (I precepted on a cardiac surgery/VICU unit). You just learn how to manage your time. Realize that some patients can pretty much do everything themselves and might just need help getting set up or something. if you have patients like this, set them up, then go tackle your total care patients. the more you do these skills, the quicker you get and you begin to learn your routine...soon you'll be juggling AM care and everything else with ease (I remember my very first bed bath took foreverrrrr )

When I did my clinicals at a nursing the CNA's were rude and didn't do anything to help us. Now I'm in a hospital and I don't even know if they have CNA's!!! We basically do everything but the RN's on the floor are always very helpful if we have questions and I'm sure they would be understanding if the AM care took a little longer than usual. Actually where I am there is no set time that everything has to be done by. We just try to plan around the meds so we are not giving a bath when the nurse comes around with the med cart. It's really up to the patient when and what type of care we provide. And only three students in our class give meds once a week so I am not always responsible for that.

thank you all very much for the feedback! it makes me feel better that we're all not going to lose our minds about this coming up in the future....

:tku:

im an NA on a colo/rectal medsurg floor and the aides ALWAYS do the baths. i have worked here almost a year and have yet to see a nurse give a bath.