I recently quit my job working at a Nursing Home as a CNA.
Out of the 8 patients I had my first and only full day of work plus the 1 additional I took on because he was abandoned by his CNA who wouldn't change his diaper because she didn't like the way he talked to her.
Out of those 9, I was only able to fully properly take care of 3 of those patients, 3 were mostly independent, and the other 3 were taken care of by 5 other staff members.
My eyes were opened to realize how much this modern Health Care system is managed to not actually work to fully and properly take care of most people as most people are in buildings like this and treated more like numbers than actual people.
They give 9 patients to a CNA MINIMUM there but it can climb as high as 20 legally in California for 1 CNA. 12-15 is normal in Hospitals I am learning.
I have heard from the patients themselves that they are not properly taken care of. For example you may have patients who wear diapers but they pooped in them and haven't been changed all morning.
The system keeps most of them alive barely, but they suffer so much and can be traumatized by their treatment.
A person needs not just their physical needs cared for, but they need to be treated as a person to and the system doesn't allow you to have enough time to do that for every person. Even then not all of their physical needs are met either.
I can't work with this system and I realize neither can anyone else.
Alot of people who work in this system do their best, but it's not good enough and it's the patients that suffer the most.
But the staff suffer to because most people like me go into the Medical field because we actually care about people and we want to help them in any way we can so when we are given the work load it would take in reality 4 or 5 of us to do and you want 1 of us to do it it breaks our heart because we have 9 people who desperately want help but we simply can't meet all of their needs no matter how much time we are given and we know we have failed them and they deserve better than that.
That's why I am not going to work in The Medical Field in direct patient care as a CNA until I pay back my parents what I owe them and save up $5,000 then they will give me a car and I can go back into Home Health Care.
I worked in Home Health Care in Hawaii for 2 years as a Home Health Aide without required to have a CNA license, but in California you need at least a CNA license to do that (which I just got in mail after a month a half of school and passing the state tests).
It is the complete opposite of most of the modern Health Care System in other places in many ways.
You get hired by an agency, they pay you and depending on the agency they pay for your gasoline to fuel your car to.
You need your own car because you have to drive yourself to your patient's home.
You call your agency and they tell you who they have that needs help.
You can ask as many questions as you want and you the right to refuse to care for anyone before you ever meet them.
And if you work with the patient and they and you don't get along you can leave their home and tell your agency you can't work with them anymore.
I had one patient one time who said Mary the mother of Jesus was not a virgin and Jesus and The Apostles were like hippies sleeping around with many people and I politely asked him not to talk about that stuff when I was working with him. He got very angry his face turned red and he said he refused to have anyone tell him what he can and can not do. So I went back home and the next day my Employers call me and wanted to suspend me because he told them lies that I said he was "The Devil".
I prayed asking God to help me in my head as they talked to me. I told them to look at my record in my reputation with my clients I have had with them and believe me not this lying angry patient I had.
They believed me and did not suspend me, but told me to avoid him.
In Home Health Care you can choose who you will meet as your possible patient and if you get along then you work it out between you and the patient when the best days and times that work for the both of you to work together. So you set your own schedule then you sumbit it to your agency Supervisor aka Manager so they can know and keep track of you.
You document what you do every day, go over it with the patient, and have your's and the patient's signature on it then you email it in to your agency and they log it in as your pay times and you get paid every 2 weeks.
You do whatever you are able to, trained for, licensed for, and can legally do for that 1 single patient for as long as you both agree to according to the schedule you both set up and agree upon together with your agency manager being notified about it.
I wasn't a CNA back then, but I did all the things I still do now as a CNA and more than that.
I cooked, I cleaned, I bought groceries (they give you their card and info and list to buy for them), I changed diapers (for only 1 patient), I showered people (only men),
I taught old men how to use modern technology like cellphones or tvs even set up their phones to work easier for them,
I made phone calls on their behalf because they didn't have the patience or sometimes the ability to actually hear people they didn't know that well fully on the phone (mostly for Problems with their tv or phone or some thing else, tech support),
I also made phone calls to set up their medical appointments and calls to their Health Insurance services to set up transportation for their medical appointments as they could not drive on their own,
I acted as a go-between them and their health care providers and facilities,
I went with them to their Medical appointments and made sure they understood everything and were properly taken care of,
I called 911 for the ambulance when they needed it,
I even brought them their mail while they were in The Hospital so they could pay their bills and not lose their homes and services while they were recovering in The Hospital (which by the way I was not payed for as the agency won't pay you as long as your patient is in the hospital but they had no one to help them so someone had to do that).
Sometimes the patient just wants to be there to talk to them or listen to them or to watch a movie with them.
They often don't have any family or friends who can stay with them and do all the things you do for them.
They often live in government discounted apartments for the the poor and elderly or in their children's house sometimes or their own house alone.
They often can not walk or drive their own cars or even own a car or vehicle.
They often have no job or income and are retired and live on SSI and their health care is paid for by their insurance which can be Veteran's Affairs, HMSA, etc. and their insurance with a Doctor's recommendation note hire your Home Health Care Agency whom then pays you.
I like this as they often don't have to pay my services out of pocket. Their insurance will even send transportation for their medical appointments to and from their house or apartment with you to ride along with them.
I did this work for 2 years.
I am a man of my Word that's why I don't make promises or commitments very easily or quickly.
Every patient I care for I commit myself fully to in any way I can.
When people have to be in a facility, it is great in many ways as they can be cared in ways that are not always possible by yourself with your level of skill and training and equipment, but they are often given top priority for emergency care then they are increasingly pushed to side as they get better in health.
This is because modern Health Care is no longer properly managed and too many patients are given to every 1 CNA, RN, and even Doctor's which honestly have it the worst.
Doctors are expected to see every patient no longer than around 11 minutes each when in the past they could take as long as they needed even hours for every patient.
I just hope and pray that I can bring more awareness and be a part of a change of this mismanaged system which honestly is from the enemy not from God.
We need lower Staff to Patient ratios, while it is true that there are often more patients than there are medical professionals we can't use that as an excuse to dump 9+ patients on 1 CNA and that's a low number from what I've read online the experiences of other CNAs who've had 15-30 or more patients they were responsible for all by themselves.
Sure the other staff step in to help when they can, but in reality my Job Title and description is a joke. My job 90% of the time has NOTHING to do with "assisting" The Nurse as a "Certified Nurse Aide". In reality my job is to DO THE JOB of The Nurse for MOST of THEIR patients to as much as I can do within my training and legal limits leaving them (in my limited perspective) with THE EASY stuff like taking vitals, giving meds, doing wound care, etc.
Nurses complain that 5 patients is "too" much for them to handle, they are completely out of touch with the reality of how us CNAs are treated by management and how we are drowning in patients while they complain about a mere 5 patients that they usually don't bathe, feed, reposition, change diapers for, get out of bed, get into bed, dress, etc. which doesn't need to be done "once" or even 3 times a day, some of these things happen all day long at various times! CNAs are like adult baby sitters which includes changing diapers at day care centers that are severely understaffed.
Now multiply by that by 2 or 3 and you got a "normal" amount of patients for 1 CNA. Meanwhile not all of the patient's needs get taken care of.
This needs to change.
There will always be more sick people then there are people to take care of them.
But the way we take care of people has to be the right way and if we take as much time as we need for each patient by giving each staff member only the number of patients they can handle then there will be less sick people as you can not possibly give the needed care to all patients for them to make a full recovery to independent stable health when you have too many patients and care gets split up and decreased over all the patients you have.
In case you were wondering, this isn't a new concept.
Dr. Victoria Sweet in her book God's Hotel tells her semi-biography of her work at a San Francisco Laguna Honda Hospital nicknamed "God's Hotel" of how things were run there before "Modern Healthcare Administration" took over to bring it up to "modern efficiency standards" by cutting the time with patients and the number of staff per patient declining the quality of the care for profits sake.
In her TED Talk on Youtube in her own words, "In seeking to put patients first, they put patients last."
Another Doctor along these lines is The Slow Medicine Doctor®
Dr. Michael Finkelstein, MD.
The concept isn't complex or difficult to understand, it is very simple: slow down and take care of each patient for as long and as much as they need physically and in any other way they need. Assign staff accordingly.
JadedCPN, BSN, RN
1,476 Posts
My mother had to muster the energy while actively dying in hospice to stop a religious zealot from pushing god on her while she was trying to die in peace. Ignorant of you to say that no one has ever been hurt by talking about god; please don't spread your mistruths. And as a healthcare worker you can have whatever beliefs you have but remember it is not okay to assume that every other person has those beliefs as well.