Beccasaur

I am a CNA and at the begining of my shift I let the patient know what I am and who their RN is. I usually write this on a white board in the patients rooms. I also give them a quick run down of the difference between a CNA and RN. Most of the time, when a patient calls for their nurse, I'm the first paged. If they're asking for pain medicine, have a question that I can't answer, or question that an RN can only answer then I tell them I will get their RN. Other times, when patients refuse to use call lights and decide to holler out 'Nurse!' at two in the morning, I still answer. Most times, patients still call me still nurse.

I had a patient once who had CDiff and she was on Golytly. I was in there with the RN for 3 hours (no joke) trying to clean her up and change linens. It was coming out faster than we could clean it. The cherry on top was that she had a Type 2 bedsore. Longest night ever!

I'm a CNA so not much can gross me out...except for old colostomy bags, patients with the wet pnemonia cough, poop from a patient that has had bad constipation, and food on dentures.

I graduated from my CNA program and I filled out applications to hospitals this Monday, but now it's Friday and I haven't heard anything except an email from one of the hospitals I applied to saying they don't hire new grads. How long should I give time before I call in asking the staus of my application or are most hospitals 'if we don't call you, assume you weren't qualified?'

This might sound silly, but I heard schools are always looking for school nurses. A lot hire RNs because you can take one look and know what's going on. I was told that you get teacher's pay and you join their union and you have summers off. Also, you can work at more than one school.

When I did clinicals, one of the first things we had to do for the day was get the patients up and awake for breakfast. We would set the trays out and set it up for them. We would also have to raise beds and feed some. If one of them didn't want to get up and eat then I would try to encourage them, but if that failed I would find the head CNA. One thing that was always drilled into me in CNA training was that the patient ALWAYS has the right to refuse.

I'm from California and to renew our licenses we need to complete 24 hours of continous training each year. My instructor said to keep every class you take in a binder with a name of the instructor, the date it was held on, and what was taught in the class. She said the state can randomly come down and 'audit' your education. I had a previous student, who's working now, tell us to 'do your time' in a nursing home because they always hire CNAs. He said you do get a lot of patients and a lot of work to do, but if your main goal is to transfer to a hospital then they take those retirement homes into consideration because it shows you know how to manage your time. Also, he said with hospitals, you get less patients so you become grateful with what you learned from retirement homes.

My instructor told us that with that skill being tested we had 10 minutes to show we could do it. She also said it didn't have to be perfect. She said what the examiners are mostly looing for is that you can properly do it.

Before I finished my CNA program, we had a representative from my dream job come in and tell us that if we were hired we were to start off at $8.25 and if we earned 12 units Child Development we would get bumped up $2. It was very discouraging to hear that. With that pay, I wouldn't be able to go back to school for those 12 units. My CNA instructor was wonderful. She would lay it out to us and the one thing she kept reminding us was that we are CNAs and we are very valuable to to the healthcare team. She told us who would pay more than others and she told us to not be afraid to ask about wages. She said we do most of the grunt and dirty work so why not. She also said is you go in asking for $12 they're going to laugh.