AmethystVeralyn

I got one of my first clues in college when my room mate came home with her friends and she was so drunk she could hardly move. Her friends decided to leave her with me.

Maybe the hispanic woman would have liked to learn some English while she was in labor.

-----------------------------------------------When you work for any employer you should not ever assume that they have your best interest at heart. That CNA who lost her baby should have filed a lawsuit against that facility. It was rude of them to tell her he has dementia like that must be an excuse for her baby to die. When you hear excuses like these they are a symptom of their blatent indifference to their workers. I have also been put in situations with patients where I was in danger and my co workers were furious when I refused to cooperate with them and risk getting punched in the face or hurting my back or dropping the patient. My advice to anyone is to have enough self respect NOT to go to work if they don't protect your welfare! You can report unsafe working conditions to the labor board and also know that the patients have the same rights and NOT MORE RIGHTS than the rest of us. They don't have a right to injure you just because they're demented. When your co workers refuse to help you with an aggressive patient they are broadcasting their lack of concern for your safety and dignity. I had this experience in a place where they claim to be working, "as a team." I was lucky not to lose a baby or end up being injured.

------------------------------------------------------ What I found out is that if you report abuse against a staff member who is well liked they will cover it up for her and blame the person reporting. If the person being turned in is someone they don't like they will obscure any facts that proove them not guilty and will lie about their attitude to get rid of them. They will also deny them the courtesy of a conference with the DoN when they know there are distortions in the facts. That way the nurse in question never has a chance to clear up the, "misunderstanding" between herself and other staff members.

------------------------------------------------------ What I found out is that if you report abuse against a staff member who is well liked they will cover it up for her and blame the person reporting. If the person being turned in is someone they don't like they will obscure any facts that proove them not guilty and will lie about their attitude to get rid of them. They will also deny them the courtesy of a conference with the DoN when they know there are distortions in the facts. That way the nurse in question never has a chance to clear up the, "misunderstanding" between herself and other staff members.

The office staff who were the first to hear about this comment burst into hysterics. One said, "Do I have a desperate look in my eyes?" You can tell by someones eyes if they're losing blood or if they have drugs in their system but can you look in their eyes and tell they were never married?

An elderly patient told her aide, "I can tell by your eyes you were never married."

I was working in a nursing home where our charge nurse got mad at a patient who was distracting us from our charting after all the others had gone to bed. She went up and started pushing on the chair she was in and demanding that she go to her room. She got the patient crying and someone on her wing had to take her to her room. It took her a while to calm down. I just want some feedback. If someone on you floor did this and you were a witness to it what would you do? Would you write an abuse report?

Most people have some awareness of where they are and who they're with when the wrong words come out. That's how they get away with it. Sometimes it's out of their concern for the patients. I was a witness to a student saying the f- word in the dining room when patients were eating. This is like swearing in church. It made it obvious that she was disoriented and made me think she was stupid. It also ruined her chances of getting hired.

Being a CNA will have several advantages. In my opinion anyone who ever wanted to take care of people should have CNA training and experience to help orient them to caregiving. You will be taught habits that will stay with you for the rest of your life. If you intend to be an RN later on it will help to know what the CNAs are going through and also because some places when they are short staffed will ask their charge nurses to work as CNAs on an emergency basis. Once I worked under an RN who had not been a CNA and I used to feel funny working under her and knowing things she didn't know. You don't always have to do changes to work as a CNA. It depends where you work.

I just have another quesion too. I read once about an RN who hit a patient and was required to leave her job. I'm just wondering out all these nurses who get in trouble with the state board, how easy is it for them to go back to nursing work? Is there any place I can research this?

With all the discussion about CNAs and CMTs and CMAs and CNA 2s and LPNs I think it would be easier and take up less space if someone who can research this topic and post the laws in each state for all 50 states. This should include what levels are legal in each state, eg. CNA 2s CMTs CMAs What the prerequisites are for further training in each state. like one year as a CNA to get into CMA training. and how many hours are required in each state. It should be posted as a graph so it's easy to read. Then there should be some statistics on how many CMAs make med errors compared with how many RNs and LPNs and what percent of them were life threatening errors compared with how many harmless errors. There seems to be some confusion about how many hours are required in various places with the idea of, "two weeks," being brought up a lot.

-------------------------------------------- A taste of her own medicine may not bring her insights but only more resentment. Abusive people sometimes have never been given any compassion.

I was a CNA for about 15 years before I even had an inservice about abuse. I never understood why no one could orient us to this topic.

I used to be one of the ones who would stay and help out on the night shift. I always tried to be respectful of them and used to get furious when people staying on from the day shift would be rude. I think they were that way because someone put them up to it. The night shift people used to refuse to help out on days when they were short because they couldn't put up with their rudeness. One example is when people ask for transfer help and the others try to bully them into moving someone alone. It's not always safe to move a patient alone just because other people do it. Sometimes they are officially two person transfers or hoyer lift patients. One time one of the CMTs from day shift passing meds on our wing demanded that two of us transfer a hoyer lift patient without the lift because they do it on the day shift. She had some excuse that she needs to be put in the bathroom (where the lift doesn't fit) and then she flew into a rage. I got really sick of people that would take liberties this way. This is not only degrading but also a threat to patient safety and CNA safety. I wonder what would happen if we were afraid of these people who try to bully us into doing things that arn't safe. Sometimes I used to wish nobody had stayed.

The genuine troublemakers who twist the truth whenthey report people and who sometimes have abused or neglected patients themselves are often kept and valued by their workplaces. Sometimes it depends on how self assured they are and if they are making their co workers feel important. People often evaluate someone according to how they are making THEM feel and this doesn't always show them the whole picture. That is part of the reason why some nurses who have bullied patients and gotten them crying but then made false accusations on co workers they didn't like are still working in the same place years later.

Someone like this needs to do factory work or something where they're not in charge of peoples safety. Maybe what you could do is direct her to a job where she doesn't work with people and then give her a reference for whatever her positive traits are.

There was one time years ago when I was fired from an agency because I failed to show up when I was scheduled. I won't go into the reasons. I really don't blame them for firing me and I still feel sorry for those people I was supposed to take care of that day. Now you've met someone who thinks there was a reason. __________________________________________

It's more important what types of people they are than where they came from. I have seen foriegn nurses who brought their poor English and bad etiquette into the patient care setting. I have seen them refuse to speak English and have also seen them talk down at their co workers and treat them like incompetant little children. I have also worked with and been taken care of by some wonderful foriegn caregivers.

I worked as a CNA in a place where all CNAs were referred to as nurses even by the charge nurses. If someone would ask me a question about meds or an issue over my head I would always send them to the charge nurse. -----------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------If this is the case where you live there must be some way you can have it changed. Do these people ever express fear over their lack of training? I've seen people be deathly afraid of passing meds or doing any skilled nursing tasks without proper training. I worked in a boarding house once where it was legal to pass meds as a CNA because I was a live-in and the state law was written to qualify live-ins as family members who can legally give meds. I was not expected to know what they were for or anything about them and there was no med book there.:stone I was never taught the rules of charting immediately for each patient or checking the med three times (which are important basic rules) I was only taught to read the book and set up the meds and give them. At that time I had only done injections on animals and was lucky to also have studdied them in a nursing class. When I mentioned that I needed to be oriented to giving shots I was asked, "What's the problem with giving the injections?" :uhoh21: I explained that when you give it in the wrong places you can paralyze someone. Also you risk getting intermuscular shots in a vein. It was only after explaining this that I was taught how to give injections.

The laws vary from state to state. In some states there are CNA 1s CNA2s CNA3s and CNA4s. In North Carolina if someone has been a CNA they can get CNA2 training where they are taught LPN procedures and then after that they can get training to be a med tech. CMTs do give out narcotics.

This reminds me of working with open sores on my hands and going in a room to help another girl and being told, "No you don't have to wear gloves." No one should ever tell you not to wear gloves when you work near body fluids. ---------------------------------------------------------------

I'm always glad to see someone get rid of mucous and getting to see them breath again but I can't stand when someone picks their nose in front of me. This really does happen. They can talk and they can ask for kleenex! I always make sure they have them before I leave a room.

-----------------------------------------------------------One way people get fired is when someone writes an abuse report on them. The same nurses who take care of records that are read by the state board are experts at covering up the truth and will do this on abuse reports too if they are trying to get rid of someone. That is they will obscure statements made by a patient that might expose a situation as being less serious than they want it to look, or if the nurse they don't like explains their side of it and this might save them, they won't include that part of it in their report. Eg. A story of a patient who told two staff members that a nurse was, "yelling at her," (and this is how she percieved it) is changed when it goes into writing and reads that, "she was rough in putting her to bed." The statements made by the patient are obscured and the statements made by the nurse when confronted are obscured because they would have exposed this case as one where discipline is not needed. The next trick in line is to get rid of the person they've reported without talking to them first because then they might have a chance to tell explain what really happened. That way they experience disciplinary action without a chance to speak for themselves. I have heard that New York is the only state where it's illegal to lie on an abuse report. I'm not sure if it's that way in any other states. Maybe someone out there knows. In most places I don't think they distinguish between honest mistakes and careless statements and outright lies. There are laws against firing people for personal predjudice but I think most employers have smart ways of getting around this. I hope to hear more on this.