Time:resident ratio

[shix]

Hello everyone. just me... again lol :). This time however, I'd love to know how other LTc's have their times worked out. So my shift starts at 6:45am - 2:45pm. The place I work at came up with this policy that we can just get ONE resident dressed before breakfast or we risk being written up. The rest of the residents we just get them up and have them go to the dining room in their johnnies/night gowns. Breakfast starts at 8am (that's an hour 15 mins). Patient care starts again at 9am after breakfast and is supposed to end at 10:45am. That's an hour 45 mins. In this hour 45mins we, (CNA's), have an assigned 15 min break (that I've never ever been able to take), a 15 min activity room monitoring time (that every one has to do since residents can't be left on their own) and a 30 hour lunch break which isn't paid for (meaning we don't work the standard 8 hours but 7.5 instead..so you might as well lol). That pretty much leaves an hour or less to do care to the rest of the residents (like 7/8, including showers). This same facility expects us to give 100% quality care (which I would soooooo love to!), toilet, clean after ourselves and the rooms and other miscellaneous unforeseen things like 'accidents' since am on the dementia/total care unit . Am just wondering, is it only my facility that expects its cna's to be miracle workers? :)

[Ashmeg87]

You're definitely not alone in that. I work 2-10:30 (evening) shift. For our shift there are 3 aides staffed. We typically have 11-12 residents we are responsible for putting to bed after supper. Supper starts around 5:30, and it's usually 6:30-7 by the time we are done with passing trays, feeding residents, gathering the trays, and cleaning up the dining room. PM Care starts at 7. We usually have 1 shower or tub bath each, and SOMETIMES you can get that done before supper, but usually not. So we're expected to put 12 residents to bed and have all their care done by about 9:15 so we can start last rounds. It comes out to roughly 6 residents/hour. 10 minutes for each resident. It's extremely frustrating.

[shix]

Ashmeg87, frustrating doesn't even start to express it. I love my residents and I love the service I give (at least most of the times lol) as am sure so do most of us..but oh my! by the time its almost 2:45pm we are literally running out the door waiting for the next shift aides to come relieve us so that we can go home! :-o and to top it off, try working around a nursing station with the two team nurses, the unit manager, ADON, DON popping up every other 5 mins, family members..list is endless. It just gets overwhelming by the time we get to 10:45 :). Oh, and not forgetting that soon after breakfast we re-arrange the dining room for activities then re re-arrange again to the normal sitting table position 15 mins prior to lunch. Then after lunch we put almost half the population to bed and transport the rest to the TV room where we then transport them out again to the Occupational Therapy room at 2:30 and somehow in all that do your charting too. How we manage to do it, I still don't know but somehow it gets done. Sometimes I just employ an 'f' it attitude and say I'll do what I can at the fastest pace that I can handle..so long as am done before lunch. So I guess in some twisted kind of way we are mini miracle workers after all. :)

[fuzzywuzzy, CNA]

I can relate. We don't have that stupid rule about only dressing one person before breakfast but my facility has other ways of setting us up to fail and while expecting us to do everything perfectly. Is your facility a for-profit run by rich people too?

We did have a nurse once who didn't want us dressing anyone before breakfast. Working with her was a nightmare because we couldn't possibly get everything done in the amount of time she forced us to do it in, and then she'd yell at us for that.

If I were you I would pick the longest resident to do care on in the morning- the one that drags his/her butt and makes you jump through hoops dragging everything out. Then wash/lotion everyone else as you get them up, but leave their johnny on so it looks like you didn't do anything. Make the bed and lay out their clothes and then when they come back all you have to do is throw their clothes on as you do your toileting.

[sunshine100]

That is crazy. We don't even allow residents to come out and eat in their jammies. We also don't have any time restrictions as long as the job gets done.

(But we breakfast is very casual and last for a few hours).

I would love to see some of these people that makes these rules just do the job for one day and then see what happens.

[shix]

Fuzzywuzzy, your idea of having them cleaned/lotioned then back to their jammies sounds like a very good idea :idea: :). I normally get away with getting two people dressed as I argue one of my residents is cleaned and dressed by the 11-7 shift. So even when they don't do it, I get her dressed and up anyway ..then one more. :). Sunshine, you have no idea how many times I have said and wished that just for one day..not two, or a week, one day, this rule makers could show up to work to do a complete CNA shift. I hear some of them were Aides at some point so I wonder 'WHAT THE 'F' HAPPENED????'. AMNESIA? Geez! Then there's this lpn who is younger than anyone on the floor but my oh my!! her ego! appaling! You should see her ranting and saying things like 'wait they'll see. They'll know who I am. I have to make a point." like *****? cummon now. She's only been licensed for a year and this is her first job but her head's grown so big!!! :-o its just sad. The things we have to put up with! LOL. My colleagues and I say we don't get paid enough for the work we do, the verbal & physical abuse and stressful environment. Try add the heat now that temps are soaring to 100 + degrees!!:smackingf

[cdicapua, CNA]

We have the same thing in our facility. I thought since we were Catholic Health Care it would be different. I work 11-7, The last time I worked was 5/14. I was expected to change 18 residents and give one to one to a difficult resident who wouldn't sleep, at the same time. This resident who wouldn't sleep kept getting out of his chair, no alarm, I had to listen for him and give care to the other 18. When I was giving care in a room to another resident, I heard him jump up,(no chair alarm) i had to lower the resident I was working with , Lower her bed and run into the hall to get this man who had disconnected his feeding tube, only to be yelled at by the nurse, who was standing on the unit watching. Get him settled and go back to resident care , the resident was also sexually aggressive, had sent 4 other cna's to the hospital in one week, and when giving him care he broker my pinky. It would be nice to be treated as a human being at work. At the very least, after all we have to take care of people. I am a cna for 2 years, I never knew how badly facilities treated the cna's