idletalk

Dickies GenFlex are excellent.

I've been working on a neuro unit for about a year now (and was a home health aide for a client with Parkinson's and dementia a year before that), so hopefully I can offer some insight. Hopefully you guys don't mind reading a nursing assistant's perspective too. I sincerely love my neuro patients. To me, the most rewarding part of caring for neuro patients is meeting them at whatever "level" they're on at the moment and just being a person they can communicate with in their own way at that time. The look in a dementia patient's eyes when she finally remembered her favorite poem from when she was a girl and recited it to me perfectly, proud of herself for exercising her mind. Or sitting with them while they tell you stories of when they were young and their minds were still full of color. But sometimes it's just as simple as having a cva patient with expressive aphasia speak up for the first time all shift to ask "will I see you again tonight?" as you're making your final rounds. Then you have the larger than life spontaneous type of confusion where you can never guess what's going to come out of their mouth next, but you're sure it's either going to hurt your feelings a little or make you want to laugh (Like the patient who literally thought I was Lyndon B. Johnson) . I could go on forever, but the point is I'm truly never bored at work. With all of that being said, they can be an immense challenge too. Sometimes communication barriers can end in tears. Confused patients don't tend to call for help when they have to pee (god help them if they have a UTI), so we have a lot of bed alarms. We get a lot of patients who need sitters to be in the room with them 24/7 for a variety of reasons, which takes our staff off of the floor. We see a lot of very sad cases in my opinion – strokes, brain tumors, brain bleeds, etc all make for very heavy family moments. There's nothing like seeing a child try to communicate with their unresponsive parent after a massive stroke. It also doesn't help that my facility is lacking a psych unit, so neuro absorbs the majority of that and our confused patients definitely feed off of that energy. That's my two cents

I'm the same way, small talk makes me sweat. As an aide I have it easy because I'll usually just say that I have to leave to go update the nurse on their most recent vital signs or let the nurse know that the patient is requesting a PRN med, etc. Sometimes if it's a patient that is known to have a bad memory and tell the same story over and over I'll let a coworker know that I'm going into the room and if I'm not back out within 5 minutes to come in and ask me to "help them with something". Sometimes I feel bad doing it but the thing is there's always something to help out with on the busy floor anyway so it's not exactly a lie.

Getting my certificate and leaving!

That is so incredibly wrong. Christian entitlement never ceases to amaze me. I would have reported her immediately.

I'm not religious in the least (I actually kind of resent most religions) but I don't mind praying with my patients. I believe that positive energy and hopeful thoughts are a good thing and if my patient feels like doing what with me I'm not going to tell them no. I get why some people are uncomfortable with prayer but how hard is it to separate yourself from the situation and just be there for someone? It seems stubborn to me. Everyone is different I guess.

As someone who works nights on a neuro unit where the majority of my patients are incontinent, yes, cleaning poop/urine is a huge part of the job. I get vital signs 3X per shift and check blood glucose etc, but between those times we pretty much just do baths and toilet patients.

Elderly patients (or any patient for that matter) shouldn't have to feel "shyness and shame" when being cared for. As a matter of fact it's your job to ensure that they don't feel that way, and neither should you. Everybody poops. Everybody pees. That's just life and I'm sorry that your religion sexualizes something natural and innocent.

You need to get that under control. Coming from someone who's battled with severe anxiety for 4 years, you can't take care of other people until you take care of yourself. Sounds very cliche, but it's just the truth. You've made it this far and I'm sure you have a good heart and you'll make a good nurse with practice. But in nursing you will encounter things much, much more stressful than a patient falling down and you have to learn how to handle it.

Yeah, no. Part of your job is to make your patient and their family feel secure, and undermining your nurse does the exact opposite of that. Sounds like you don't think very highly of the nurses you work with, and it's the patients who suffer when that happens. Be a mediator not an instigator. Throwing your nurse under the bus to a family member isn't a way of "covering yourself" because dressing changes aren't your responsibility as a CNA - they are the nurse's. If she hasn't done something that she was supposed to, it's likely that something more urgent came up and she had to take care of that first. Have some respect and give your nurses the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they ignored their responsibility. They are only human.