mstearns09

Most facilities want you to be 18 also due to the fact that you cannot legally operate lifting equipment until you are 18. Some facilities will probably still hire you but limit you to what you can do until you turn 18.

There are always going to be the people who don't pull their equal weight, the people who want to be SuperAide, the people who work hard and get the short end of the stick, and the people who know how to work together. It is impossible to work somewhere that these people don't. The key is to work around it. I'm sorry you supervisor buys into this aide's drama; you are wise to look for another job. Where I work, the lone wolf approach and the I can't do it all by myself approach doesn't work. We do teamwork and we work together to get things accomplished. It is expected by each of us CNAs (with the exception of one), by the administration, the DON, and the nurses. Some branch out and don't play along but more gets accomplished by our approach. The ones who don't play along usually don't last or they get reprimanded. Perhaps some reverse psychology on your fellow CNA could help: Make a bargain with her that if she wants your help, she has to help you first. If the supervisor is upset by it, well, you weren't hired and assigned to her position and your own.

The c.diff patients....yes! That odor will infect the entire hallway! We had one recently and once you experience it, you never forget it. I think I might start keeping a jar of coffee beans in my locker and sniff them after cleaning up a patient with a BM accident. I've been doing this for 3 years so I'm pretty used to the smells but the ones that linger get me every time.

Nope, not a typo in the title. I know over time you get used to the smells you encounter at work. I know all the tricks of the trade when I feel like gaging when cleaning up a particularly difficult code brown, but every once in a while, I come across a code brown that lingers in my nose long, long after I have it cleaned up. I always check myself when I'm done cleaning up someone with an incontinent BM to make sure it didn't get on me but despite checking and knowing it isn't on my uniform, it's as if my nose is still tricking me into smelling it. Anyone else experience this and have advice for how to get the smell to leave my nose?

Mind you, I work at a small hospital, but we do admits, discharges, vitals, I & Os, ambulation, assist PT as needed, pass hall trays, set up telemetry, take patients down to the attached clinic for appointments, baths and showers, pass ice waters, snacks, clean and tidy rooms, make beds, set up rooms after they have been deep cleaned after a discharge, take out the trash and laundry, and help in the ER as needed. The nurses do Accuchecks, anything with IVs, and remove foleys.

I made myself a "brain" sheet. It's difficult to describe but I have it set up to record patients' names, room numbers, whether they have vitals that need charted and how often, if they are on i&o, have a Foley, and a place to chart anything else I need to know and what I do for them during the day. The only time I stop to chart during shift is if I am charting their vitals on q8 or q4, or if they refuse care multiple times and I need to cover myself and the nurse. Everything else I wait to chart at the end of my shift. At the hospital where I work, CNAs sit in on the nurses' shift report at the beginning of shift but report off to incoming CNAs at the end of shift. We fill out incident reports with our side of what happened. It is a much simpler form than what I had to do in LTC. But, as others have said, your mileage may vary depending on building policy.

Orientation usually occurs after you have the job secured. They didn't tell you about pay and benefits then? If you're actually on the floor, you need to have scrubs on and shoes that will be sturdy and comfortable.

My dad still has one in his basement. It's a lovely avocado green.

The Compass test is a test of your basic knowledge level and is often used to find the best entry level classes for you when starting at a community college. They probably are going to look at your reading score for entry into a CNA class and maybe your math score. There really isn't any way to prepare for it as your 4 years of high school were the preparation for it.

What about a rotary dial phone? *giggle*

Don't count on it. Nothing put on the internet is ever truly private. There are always ways of finding so-called private information. If people want the information bad enough, they will find a way around Facebook's security provisions. My rule of thumb is that if I wouldn't share it out in public, I won't share it on Facebook.

STNA and CNA are the same thing. Some states call them STNA and others call them CNA.

A wise person once told me that anything worth doing requires effort. Even the most successful people in the world, regardless of their income, had to fail multiple times before they found success. Failure and success go hand in hand; you can't have one without the other. If you truly want to do this, you have to make an effort and learn from your failures. Yes, it was not appropriate for the instructor to say what was said in public, but take that experience and make it a positive.

Yep. I am feeling the same way. To the OP, if you're going to work in healthcare, proper terminology is a must. If you were to use slang terminology like that in front of a patient, the patient would likely be incredibly insulted and humiliated. Just like we have to be conscious of what we do to patients, we have to be conscious of what we say in front of them, too. Just a bit of advice, for what it's worth.

All of this is why I don't post anything on Facebook about my job. I don't even list where I work. Any reference to work is so vague or completely objective that no one could look at it either in private fashion or public fashion and draw any sort of negative conclusion. I am friends with people from work but I don't say how I know them. When it comes to the internet, you have to keep it as vague and open-ended as possible in order to cover your backside. Even screen names can reveal more than you expect them to reveal. If someone knows you well enough, they can find you behind even the most elusive screen name. And the poor choices of what to post don't necessarily fall under the category of young people making stupid choices. I have read posts by adults who are older than me that made me cringe.

One of the best CNAs I ever worked with was 4'9" and probably weighed 99 pounds soaking wet. Size generally doesn't matter. Ability and willingness to do the job to the best of your ability does.

Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere (even here), you have to be careful what you say and how you say it. Merely deleting a post will do you no good; neither will pleading you did it on your own time. Freedom of speech does not protect freedom from consequence. I've seen adults of "wiser" ages make just as poor decisions about what they post as adults of younger ages. Age does not equate common sense and sometimes, even posting something out of innocence can cause people to act with less than wise discretion.

I generally work 1st shift, 7a to 3p, with two other CNAs. The first one takes lunch at 11a, the next at 11:15, and the last at 11:30. This way, there is always one person on the floor. Works well for us.

It depends on the shift. If I work day shift, we get report and whoever is designated the "D" gets the vitals while the rest of us get patients up for breakfast (we also have an intermediate section of long-term care patients). Once breakfast trays have been passed and collected, we start tub baths, showers, and bed baths along with linen changes and answering call lights and doing admits and discharges as well as ambulating patients and toileting them. By 11, it's time for vitals and getting people up again. Lunch trays go out and we pass ice and collect trash. Second shift is different. We start with vitals, answer call lights and get people up around 4:30, 5:00 for dinner tray pass. After dinner, we ambulate those need it, take our dinner break, and pass ice and snacks again. At 7, we take vitals again and start getting intermediates ready for bed. We pick up trash, do visual checks, and lock down the hospital around 9. We do bed check between 9 and 10 and take out the trash. We may have admits or discharges anywhere in there. One caveat, though: I work in a very small, level 4 trauma hospital so we have other responsibilities besides just nursing. We sometimes get called to the ER to help transfer patients to the bed, commode, or bathroom.

Not sure about the lift tests as each of mine were different, but the respiratory fit test will be for a N95 PPE mask since there is a chance you could be exposed to TB while working.

One of those nurses who is never happy with anything that you do even if you've gone above and beyond the call of duty to match the patient/resident's wishes? I have to work with one and clearly I am not her favorite person. I'm fine with that; I'm not there to be someone's favorite. I'm there to give patient care. I'll admit that I am not the perfect CNA, but the SuperCNA is a myth as far as I'm concerned. It just seems that no matter how hard I'm working, it's never good enough for her. I make sure people are clean, dry, comfortable and have everything they need and their wishes met. Still not good enough. I am not a lazy person. I'm the person who seeks out work to do if I don't have something to do, whether it's making empty beds or updating calendars or cleaning whiteboards in empty patient rooms. It's just completely aggravating, especially when I see other CNAs getting away with things that I would get written up for yet nothing is done. I've even been held accountable for another CNA's lack of good patient care! If she really thinks I'm that bad of a CNA, she should see the CNAs at my former job. She'd freak out. Not looking for advice, really, just needing to vent.

No. You must be certified by your state. Going into the test without formal training would be highly discouraged. In my experience, most hospitals want at least a year of experience. The work in LTC is often not like the work in a hospital. I would never have been able to keep up with the amount and quality of work I have to do in the hospital if I had not first worked in LTC. It taught me how to keep pace and work efficiently.

I have to find some humor in work everyday otherwise I'd go crazy. :-) And sometimes it isn't the patients; it's the providers!

All CNAs are state tested/ some states just call them different things.