NEW CNA: Running behind on workload! Feel awful!

[panjia]

Hi all,

Brand new CNA.

Already had 6 days of training.

So far, have worked 6 days of being assigned my own patients, ranging from 6 - 12, but typically 10 to 12 patients.

Problem? I am not fast enough, I work my best and prioritize.

Here's how I prioritize:

1. Help/clean patients who need to immediately get to the bathroom

2. Vitals if needed

3. Meal times

4. Simultaneously change soiled clothes/briefs/drawsheet or pads for anyone else who I didn't get to change, especially getting FIRST to the patients who have therapy or dialysis soon.

**MAIN PROBLEM: my guilt for failing to care for every single one of my patients, since I did prioritize who needed what first. Some of the patients I want to change, say they want to be changed later...so then I do it later, and move on to a higher priority. Yet, when I sit down and chart, I realized, I had FORGOTTEN like 1 or 2 patients! Even though we are REQUIRED to do bed baths for every patient, there is just not enough time to do that for every single patient! However, I find in the charting, that nearly everyone SOMEHOW has the time to do it. Is this true?! I don't know how it is realistically possible! I am still learning which things I can do to take short-cuts, b/c there is just too many patients in so little time

I honestly did my best to keep the patient safe and clean. I feel SO overwhelmed handling 10 or more patients!! The teamwork goes well, but sometiems we only have 3 CNAs for like 30 beds. Finding help can be hard, and delays my other tasks.

Thank you for reading, I tried to make this as concise as possible.

[mintyfreshgal]

Are you working in a SNF or hospital?

For me, a SNF took me about close to 90 days to get a good feel of everything. I made mistakes along the way, like not showering a pt on their shower day because I felt behind. The day came when I was able to do it but I was always cutting it close to lunch time and whatnot. It was really difficult because the nurses would want their pt up first and truthfully everyone wants to be first.

This is really hard because nurse aides like ourselves have so much concern and care and love for our pt that we really take it personally hard when we fail to do just that.

And when you work with others who have been doing it close to a year, you can't help but compare and wish you were that person already. No one signs up for a job to fail at it or clock into work wanting to fail or fall behind, but it happens, we're human. You should probably continue to ask for more time to orientate or shadow with someone (but sometimes they might look at you funny because for them its been a long time since they were us)

I know, I get it, we're JUST cna and we're not dealing with "meds" or the "more important stuff" but that doesn't mean that time management isn't a skill, because it totally is. It takes time to adapt to that and some shifts just have a heavy day.