tiredtech

i can sympathize with the dilemma of being stretched too thin! we have all been there. my unit has very few "walkie-talkies" and many total/turn patients. oh neuro. if they are ambulatory, it's usually a seizure or altered mental status patient - still a fall risk to assist up to the bathroom. we have just over 35 beds and if we're full with only two techs, it can be a total nightmare. on those days my survival strategy is to put all the towels/gown/linen in the room at the beginning of shift, so that i'm ready to bathe the moment the patient has a bm. we can't do it all. but if you say you bathed, please have really bathed, you know? quote]i came across a patient once who received a "bath" full of baby powder. instead of just cleaning this patient like one normally would before bed, this cna was so lazy they thought the baby powder would suffice for peri-care. it was beyond disgusting. yes! we definitely have those who love using powder on our unit. oddly, this is something everyone denies doing. it's terrible when i move the bed pads and a visible cloud of powder erupts into the air. gonzo1 made an excellent point i wish we would remove baby powder from the floor. you'll encounter patients with thick paste in skin folds from all the baby powder or nystatin caked on. it's difficult to scoop and scrub that off without irritating the patient's skin - especially when it's nystatin and the skin is so raw and tender underneath. (interdry fabric anyone? that stuff is amazing.) it seems the logic is: baby powder smells good, smelling nice = clean. i wish the nurses had to do full body assessments after baths. having that accountability would help so much. when the only other person that will see the state of the patient is the next tech, there's not a lot of external pressure to do the job.

What is a bath? When you say you "bathed" someone on your shift, what should I expect was done? I'm getting frustrated. Being a tech is frequently an icky job, but don't we have an obligation to get people clean? Going after some techs when I change a diaper, it's very clear that the patient's bath wasn't thorough. Dabbing at someone's armpits with a wet washcloth and calling it a day just isn't cutting it. If I'm paralyzed one day, I hope someone is reeeeally cleaning me to make sure funk isn't building up somewhere on my body. We recently had an MR patient for almost two weeks on our floor. I first had him as a patient about 10 days in. While in bathing I retracted his foreskin to clean and there was... well, a solid sheet of smegma underneath. It was difficult to even move the skin out of the way in the first place and cleaning it was awful. It had clearly been building up since before he was in our hospital, but why -after 10 days under our care- was it still a hot mess? How does this even happen? I asked around on my floor and no one retracts foreskin during a bath, not even our two male techs. Yes, it's incredibly awkward and distasteful. Yes, I hate doing it, but aren't we obliged to make sure our patients are clean and sanitary everywhere? If they're incapacitated and bounced to us from a nursing home, shouldn't we make sure they're actually clean? It's increasingly difficult for me to ignore when this stuff happens - like when the patient that was "bathed" still has stool on her perineum and between her lower labia. Sure, it's horrible to clean that up, but it's worse to sit like that. Just venting. Just angry that it seems like not enough techs that I work with care enough to get under the skin folds, even when they're in ick places, even when the patient is hundreds of pounds overweight. No one likes doing this, but if I'm a patient care tech, shouldn't I be really caring for the patient?!!? When I first started I gave techs benefit of the doubt more often, but 8 months in, not so much. After a while you know who does and who doesn't do the job... I have no idea how to constructively talk about this with coworkers. I doubt the tech that's worked nights for 15+ years would be swayed by anything I did or said. Just had to vent. Thanks for reading.