First I would just like to introduce myself and give a little back ground.
I'm a 24 year old male who has worked at a brain trauma center for a year in house keeping. It doesn't involve direct patient care, but I interact with the patients on a daily basis and I've worked with quite a few who have behaviors right along side the CNA's on the floor.
I'm also a pre nursing individual studies student, I've just gotten through a year of pre and co-reqs and I've got a cumulative 3.75 GPA, my GPA last semester was 3.90. I'm very serious about my profession in health care.
So I registered for the CNA program at my local Boces and it's gone pretty well. It's given me a lot of great experience and for the most part its been profitable with a few bumps.
At this points I'm in the clinical portion of the class, and I've run into a problem with what I consider to be blantant sexism. Today was my third day in clinicals and I was performing perineal care on a resident who was highly constricted, this was a resident I had been working with my first night of clinicals. She was a female and I had to verbally and somewhat physically help her relax so two other sudents and myself could perform perineal care on this resident. Half way through the skill one of the students left without and explination and returned with one of the other students five minutes later. They proceeded to explain to me that, "This resident is a female CNA only resident, so we're going to need you to leave." So I was somewhat skeptical but did not want to make the resident uncomfortable so I just agreed with them and left. I went to the LPN on the floor and asked her if this resident was in fact female CNA only. She said that she wasn't, so I explained the situation to the instructor because I was somewhat upset, and she had a few words with the other students. At the end of the clinical I had a few words with the instructor, and she kind of beat around the bush but I got the vibe from her that she was siding with the female students altough it was obvious that they had lied about the resident being female CNA only because she felt that they where right that I wasn't "In touch" with the residents emotions and how she felt about the care. This resident has severe dementia and she made no verbal responses to any of the attempts we made to speak with her. So we explained the procedure and she seemed to be fine with it, she was just constriced and we had to relax her a little bit; which did mean getting her to open up her legs somewhat.
I firmly believe I know the difference between a resident who is consiously resisting and is upset, and a resident who has severe dementia and is constricted. I was very upset with the situation, and how the instructor didn't really get to the point with the constructive critisism and just kind of hinted and gave me vibes that she thought I was wrong. I'm just . . . frustrated. Can someone give me their thoughts on the situation? I've got three more days of clinicals left and I want to get the most out of them that I can before I move onto my first job as a CNA. I feel like I'm missing something here. I don't know, maybe I need to focus on my interpersonal relationships with my coworkers more? Maybe I rubbed them the wrong way? They had all of their supplies set up on the dresser near the TV, (there was no bedside table). I gave them the bright idea of using the geriatrics chair as a clean surface, kind of like a bedside table to work with instead of walking in and out of the curtain to wash and rinse the washcloth. . . . which I might add meant walking ten feet with a dripping feces covered cloth. . .
