Please share your experience - Clinicals for CNA

ChynaGrove · Jan 20, 2010

Lots of peri-care and bed baths in the facility we used. Transferring from bed to chair, ambulating, and we also practiced nail and denture/oral care on anyone we could who would let us.

fuzzywuzzy, CNA · Jan 20, 2010

My clinicals were more confusing than anything.

The first half hour was sitting around talking in some room downstairs while we waited for the instructor and the facility to decide who was doing what assignment. We'd all gett old what floor we were working on and which dining room to go to at supper. Then they'd tell you that you and your partner would have 2 residents each, and be following the same 2 aides. I still don't understand it, actually. It was comforting to have a partner from your class, but I think I'd have learned a lot more if we each just followed a CNA (I think there were more students than CNAs though).

Then we'd go upstairs and take notes off the care plans of "our" residents. Meanwhile the CNAs would be kinda standing around waiting for supper to come up. We would help transport people, pass trays, and feed.

After supper was done we'd try to follow our assigned CNAs. It was chaos. CNAs work extremely quickly and I felt like every time I turned around they were gone. I never knew what to do with my assigned residents. We weren't allowed to transfer people without CNA supervision and most of the time I'd go in there and "my" resident would be done and in bed. We'd find our CNAs and ask what to do and they'd tell us to do HS care on someone and they'd be back to supervise the transfer when he was ready for bed. Well they would come back in 20 times to see if we were done yet. lol. We were so slow!

There were 10 students so I didn't see much of my instructor. Here and there she would tell us she was going to supervise my partner and I in doing a shower or a bedbath. So I did get to do those 2 things.

The last half hour was the class meeting in that same room again to talk about our experiences that night. I was always frustrated because I wanted to practice more skills. Now that I know how busy these places are and how they're so locked into their routines, it makes sense that I didn't get so much out of it.

The class teaches you how to do a succession of tasks. It doesn't teach you how to actually manage several people at once or how a nursing home is actually run. Your clinicals may or may not be more helpful than mine in that regard. The facility where I had mine had never had students before so I think it was more chaotic than usual. I felt like I had to learn everything all over again on the job when I started working.

rosey2007cna · Jan 21, 2010

To be honest I just learned the tip of the ice berg in my CNA class. It is when you get out on your own that you really start to learn and continue to learn new things. At least it was for me:cool:.