RANT!

[daniellemarie]

Hi guys! I just wanted to rant a little & see if any of you have come across situations like these..

- I was giving an ALERT patient a shower & she told me she wants to take her hearing aids off in the shower room.. She held them in her lap all the way back to her room & I had to get her ready for bed but I had to leave her for five minutes to help her room mate into the bathroom. When I got back to her I was taking care of all the things we brought to the shower room and back BUT her hearing aids were missing! I walked up & down the hallways, asked the nurses & other cnas if they saw anything, searched the shower room & the dirty linen bins in there but with no luck. I got back to the patient defeated & decided that it'll just show up & took her to the bathroom to brush her teeth. THEN her toothbrush went missing, & she told me to check in her drawer.. THERE I found her hearing aids, she put them in there the five minutes I left to help her room mate.. I was happy at the time because I was so worried I was going to ger fired for losing her hearing aids, but when I think about it I'm very upset & annoyed at the situation.

- I was passing trays out on the floor & went into one room with one patients tray & he wasn't in there so I took it back BUT the other patient had his wife in there & she was tripping out about how I went in there with his tray & walked out. She had to call the charge nurse & everything.. So i went back in there with that patients tray & she was trippin out about how I went in there & ignored them.. Then when I was getting the patient ready for dinner (sitting him up, fixing the side table etc) she had the nerve to call out for another cna & complained to him how I didnt know what I was doing, right in front of me.. THE WHOLE TIME I WAS EXPLAINING TO HER WHAT I WAS DOING OR ABOUT TO DO. She wasn't even listening to what I was saying OR giving me enough time to do what I was about to do..

I understand that every day is a challenge & these probably aren't the worst things that could happen, but I would've liked for these things to not have happened to me within my first two weeks of working as a CNA

[fuzzywuzzy, CNA]

I once got screamed at by a nurse because I walked in with a supper tray and the woman was on a commode and wanted to get off. So I said ok let me get rid of this tray first (not wanting to toilet someone with food sitting on the table, not to mention the way things were set up if I left the tray on the table it probably would have tipped over- she has piles of junk everywhere). I turned around and walked out, put the tray back on the cart and by the time I got back to her room she was crying to the nurse about how I told her she was going to have to eat on the toilet! I said no such thing and that is completely ridiculous! And I got yelled at... I was thinking "You BELIEVED her?"

[CoffeemateCNA]

When it comes to things like hearing aides, don't trust the residents, even if they are AAO x3. Ideally, they would go in their designated container, but when you're in a pinch like that, wrap them up in a paper towel or washcloth and put them in your pocket. Then the resident can't lose them and blame you. :)

Don't worry about the families. Some of them are great, others are unfortunate but necessary evils. You didn't do anything wrong. They just feel out of control and guilty that their loved one has to be cared for by others. Their way of "regaining control" is to lash out and complain at staff.

I don't even notice it anymore; my brain automatically filters out 95% of their crap that I don't want to hear.

When families like this come in it's so tempting to put up a sign that says "Don't feed the monkeys."

[rosey2007cna]

Personally I would not stick the hearing aides in my pocket because the resident will think that you are stealing them. I would put them into a container labeled hearing aides and put them in their drawer so they do not get lost.

[CoffeemateCNA]

Personally I would not stick the hearing aides in my pocket because the resident will think that you are stealing them. I would put them into a container labeled hearing aides and put them in their drawer so they do not get lost.

Normally I would do that, too. The pocket thing was for situations like the poster described where the resident was already in the shower room. She can't leave the resident alone in the shower room to go get the correct container, and if the hearing aides are set on a sink, etc., it's possible they could be damaged by water. If the resident is alert, I would explain it to them and gain permission before putting them in my pocket.

[Ev1987]

I wouldn't get upset or annoyed at the fact that the lady placed her hearing aides in her drawer. Did she ever tell you that she lost or was missing her aides? If she did, then it's possible that she just forgot she placed them away. I consider myself ALERT, but sometimes I still lose track of where I place my items. Family members can be drama queens sometimes. But I would have acknowleged the people in the room before I had left at least with a 'hello' or smile. The best thing you can do in situations like that is to remain calm, professional and polite. And accept the fact that we can't please everybody, no matter how hard we try. When I have a hard day at work, I ask myself 'Is there anything I can learn from this, so I won't make the same mistake or have the same outcome?' And normally, I do find ways I can handle situations diffrently or better.

[kids]

I've never worked where we were allowed to carry an unserved tray back out of a patient room and put it back on the cart. The State considers it contaminated (even if you never set it down) and will ding you for it.