Ms.Migraine

Thank you everyone! I hope that it doesn't seem like I'm unhappy with the entire younger generation! I was only concerned about young students who only see dollar signs.... I'm glad the one I wrote about has the opportunity to be a CNA first, and hope she soon finds that RNs in the hospital feed people, change attends, and are expected to work also. (may her clinical rotations come quickly) I sometimes am "pulled to the floor" myself to work as the aide to another nurse when we are severely short in staff. Except for the back ache, I find it less stressful. And I always help my aides with turns, transfers, cleaning up etc. I wish I could have fed the woman in my first post myself, but the three hour med pass makes it impossible. Thanks again for the feedback.

Hello! This is my first post here, sorry it is a rant...but I needed badly to let this out. I have been a LPN for 25 years, and work in a small nursing home. A nursing student who hopes to become a registered nurse works as one of our assistants on the evening shift. One evening, she was reading fast food menus in the dining room while sitting next to an elderly woman with dementia who needs to be fed by the staff. I asked her to feed the woman...came back ten minutes later (I was passing medications) and found her still reading the menus and talking about what she wanted to eat while the plate of food in front of the elderly woman grew colder. I asked her once again to feed the woman and put the menus down. If looks could kill I'd be a dead woman, but she finally fed her. After the meal, she came to me and another nurse actually complaining she was bored with her assignment and had almost nothing to do. We suggested she help another assistant who was swallowed in a heavier assignment, or to give a shower that was scheduled for the next shift. She refused, feeling that it was unfair for her to be expected to do another person's work. She then went to lunch. When she returned, I asked her again to help the other assistant and was met with a blank stare. After having the RN supervisor move her to another floor where she could be directly observed by her, she came downstairs and loudly complained several times that I did not allow her to work on my floor! She tried several times to draw me into an argument, purposefully hanging around in the hallway distracting my aides who WERE working. I chose to ignore her behavior, glad she wasn't assigned to my residents. I experience this same scenario more often these days on the job, where I often train young people who are new assistants or new nurses. They have passed the exams .... but few of them have the basic necessary ingredient to be a health care worker. COMPASSION She has not yet figured this out, and still feels I was being unfair. The girl without compassion who fails to realize her error has a wonderful career of neglect and abuse ahead which are all very legally juicy terms in our field of work. If she would ONLY listen NOW to the mean old nurse...... I'm afraid many people in a lousy economy will enter nursing school for the pay and not have any grasp on the basics. There are some things they don't teach at the university....and most of us old timers entered nursing when it paid barely above minimum wage. We WANTED to be nurses. Please! I would like to hear what other nursing students or assistants here might have to say.