Trying to avoid undesirable CNA duties

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Does anybody know of any CNA jobs where you don't have to wash the patients or or wipe butts? Also I'm a sophomore BSN student with an associates in engineering and 6 months volunteer work at a hospital and worked in plant engineering at another hospital. Might any of this helps with job oppertunities where I don't have to wipe or wash people?

Chey Fire > Well i figured if enough people hate me I can run for president

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Well Chey Fire calm down I was just asking on ways to better deal with them not avoid them or is that not allowed either?

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but I appreciate the lack of degrading comments chey fire. Thank You

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Specializes in being a Credible Source.
I think my main problem is fear of catching something.
Flight nursing may not be for you, then. Pretty much impossible to maintain contact precautions on someone going for whirly-bird ride... and very tight, cramped quarters, too.
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Specializes in Peds and adult ED, trauma.
So in other words you are looking for a "glamour" job.And you expect nursing to be like it is on TV,adrenalin pumping, always a crisis, with everyone looking to you "save the day"? You talk about wanting to help people in life threatening situations.What makes you think basic patient care doesn't matter? Changing and repositioning a wet/soiled pt helps prevent pressure sores which can lead to serious infection and fist sized ulcers.You ARE saving a life.Properly cleaning and positioning a patient IS a skill.When you have a patient that cannot move themselves in bed means they are at the mercy of the person that is supposed to be making them comfortable.

Please don't become a nurse.

Truly desiring to help others is reflected in a willingness to perform any task necessary,including the least desirable tasks such as bathing and cleaning. If you are unwilling on don't have the humility to freely jump in and lead, not just help with, the least desirable tasks than I question. How capable you will be with the more "glorious" tasks, as you see them. No one can run with out first walking, and crawling for that matter.

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Specializes in Peds and adult ED, trauma.
sniff sniff...... smells like a fire starter to me. or maybe just a troll. not sure. but still this post reminds me of the odor of c diff .....

i just cannot believe this one's for real. i cannot imagine anyone in healthcare thinking they won't have to deal with body fluids.

that is like saying i want to be a dentist but i don't want to work with teeth. it just is not realistic.

if body fluids distress anyone that much, health care is just not the area for them.

i actually did have a couple of classmates in my nursing program that were surprised they would have to deal with the 3-ps (poo, puke and pee). they both quit by the end of the first semester, one never showed up again after her first clinical experience involving stool. better to realize your limits and change course earlier rather than later.

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Specializes in Peds and adult ED, trauma.
Well Chey Fire calm down I was just asking on ways to better deal with them not avoid them or is that not allowed either?

Vicks is good. If you're "lucky" you have allergies like me and can't smell very much a lot of the time.:p

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Specializes in Oncology/Haemetology/HIV.
to orange juice > Well handling poop has gotten easier I think my main problem is fear of catching something. I think if I educate my self more on what I can catch and can't if I don't handle it properly will relax my nerves a little when I have to wipe a patient again. But for some reason blood, mucouse pee, or anything else doesn't bother nearly as much as cleaning poop and from what I've been told they don't have to tell the CNA's what contagiouse diseases patients are able to transmit to you because privacy laws etc. You just have to use "standard precautions" which i think is unfair because I believe the nurses know so how come CNA's arent privy to that information? Just to sum it up , just in case you guys havn't figured it out my reasons or my main concerns with quote "undesirable CNA duties" (I apologize again) is fear of catching something. Anybody out there with POSITIVE helpful info feel free to reply.

First, you should be using "universal precautions" and good handwashing habits when handling all bodily fluids, just as nurses do. This prevents the vast majority of contagious illnesses.

Second, what makes you think that the nurses know that much more than you do, as far as what the pt has. Unless a pt is screened on admission for all contagious illnesses, the nurse generally will not know about the illness, unless it was the presenting disorder.

I work in one of the few depts in a major hospital that screens pts very thoroughly, as they are either severly immunosuppressed or their treatment involves severe immunosuppression. Many of these pts initially are relatively healthy, yet at least 10-20% show up positive for MRSA/VRE bacteria in stool or nares. These are people that were walking around in the supermarket, preparing your food in a restaurant or eating next to you, using public bathrooms, touching door knobs and carts. Do you avoid ALL of these activities?

Even with our screening, some things do not get routinely screened for . We (and almost no one screens for HIV) unless there is a good reason. Few preop pts ever get an HIV test. We screen or several forms of hepatitis but very few places do. As nurses we are expected to treat ALL pts as contaminated....in the same way that you as a CNA should be treating them.

And there are very few illnesses that you can get by urine, unless you are bathing with it, drinking it, or injecting it in your veins. I trust that you are not doing that. There are some common illnesses that are transmittable by stool, all of which are easily avoidable using gloves and proper handwashing.

Third, if you want the "exciting" jobs, most of those deal with pts that are less likely to be screened. If you work in a MASH, you are dealing with soldiers that are bleeding, and while they did get screened at one time and perhaps at intervals, that doesn't mean that they get tested so regularly, that they aren't ill when they come to you. They also are a tad more prone to STDs, as well as in combat, to some of the more nasty resistant easily transmittable illnesses - a lot of wounded ME vets are bringing acinibacter (resiatant) back over. And universal precautions are not enough to keep that one from clobbering entire ICUs of pts.

If you are a flight nurse, you will often be picking up fresh traumas with lots of blood, plenty of gang bangers that are shot or knifed, drug dealers/users, meth house explosions etc. - you don't know what they have. Or car accident victims /construction work /building collapse /fires , that you have no history on. Scheduled flight transfers, even if the had Hep or AIDs, most the time as the nurse, you may not know - it isn't information that is "essentially needed to do your job, so it may not be passed on. That's what universal precautions are about.

Thus worrying about poop and urine "givng you" something is quite shortsighted. If you use universal precautions as you should be, you are about as safe as you can get in this career. Your vast risk of illness is from the coughing and sneezing that the pts do. ALL of the RN positions that you named have much , MUCH higher chances of exposure to a pathogen and LESS chance of knowing the pt that the pt "has something" that is transmittable.

And quite bluntly, you are probably at much greater risk of getting resistant illnesses and other infections from going to the local bargain store/ supermarket/taking a flight/ subway/ etc. than using universal precautions and working in a hospital as an aide.

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Specializes in PACU, LTC, Med-Surg, Telemetry, Psych.

The original question is if it is POSSIBLE to be a CNA, not a RN or LPN, and not have to be buried in bodily fluids and poo. This is not about exciting RN jobs or anything dealing with whether or not someone is going to be RN. Some of us are actually career CNAs.

For the lurkers some of you self-righteous RNs have scared away, I will post the answer to the question.

CNA is a poop and pee field. 90% of the time, you are hired so nurses can pass meds and do paperwork. They can do your job, but you cannot do theirs.

The other 10 percent is here. But many of these areas have low turnover, other issues, or require a great network and experience to get in.

- You can work Adult Psych like Drug Rehab, Suicides, etc. and only have to deal with pee/poo on a limited basis. Avoid Geriatric Psych. The job in the paper is called MHT.

- You can do Patient Transport with a CNA in larger places.

- You can be a Unit Clerk.

- Some very few can work in clinics, but you probably need to know somebody.

- Anything in anesthesia or surgery does not have much poo.

Do not bring up your dislike of only having to clean poo around nurses. It is a touchy subject that has social class issues. People who will not clean poo are useless to Big Nurses and do NOT get hired. All the easy to get CNA jobs deal with poo.

Not flaming anybody, but honest career questions should not be flamed or laced with venom like these "I clean..blah..blah".

But I think this threads length and tone sums it up.

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Specializes in LTC, Home Health, Hospice.

I do think that the horse is dead.....time to bury this one.

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Specializes in Med-Surg/urology.
I do think that the horse is dead.....time to bury this one.

Maybe it should just be closed...

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Specializes in Emergency Room.

Curious though, was exactly do you do with an associate degree in engineering? Good luck in your career decisions!

My sis-in-law has an assoc. in engineering and I don't know what she does exactly (WAAAY over my head, I'm sure) but she makes BANK! :)

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