I absolutely hate it when Recreation takes residents away without telling anyone. I go to toilet them and they're gone. Then they bring them back later and make sure to inform you that the resident is wet or full of BM. Okay thanks for giving me the opportunity to toilet them now that it's too late. Or if someone who normally goes to rec wants to lay down in the afternoon the rec people always come to you with a pained/panicked expression. "Mrs. Smith is laying down?????ohnoesssss!!!" Hmm, well Mrs. Smith is 97 years old and every now and then she decides she wants a nap.
And the volunteers! I swear half our residents are more A&O than some of these people. How many times do you have to tell someone "DO NOT COME IN" before they get it? They'll be transporting someone back from an activity and keep trying to barge in while we've got the roommate up in a lift with her butt hanging out. Can you not wait 5 minutes so this person can poop without an audience? Or better yet, leave the other resident in the hallway and GO AWAY. No, instead they just ignore you and barge in anyway, hitting you with the door and running over your foot with the wheelchair and then they leave with the resident parked ass-backwards in the middle of the room.
Old thread, but my pet peeve right now is getting someone dressed in the morning and having to untangle a big old rat's nest because the beautiful hairdo I did up for them yesterday never got taken out and now the hair is wrapped around elastics or clips or combs. Who here goes to bed with plastic hairpieces on the back of their head? I'm thinking no one! I do people's hair because I don't want my residents looking like slobs... I don't do it just to make things harder for 2nd shift.
Also can't stand the lack of respect for people's things. I know accidents happen but no one at my work can have a piece of jewelry for more than 2 weeks before it gets broken. On the rare occasion that a hair accessory DOES make it out of someone's hair at night, it's never seen again. Or you find it on the floor the next day, stepped on. Buttons get ripped off shirts, sweaters get sent to laundry with brooches still pinned on, and necklaces get forcibly pulled over people's heads instead of by unhooking the clasp. And then there are the clothes that get jammed in a wrinkled heap at the bottom of the closets. Someone's shampoo or mouthwash spills in a drawer and no one cleans it up and it makes a sticky or moldy mess all over their stuff. COME ON.
My pet peeve this week is our therapy department. Now, I've worked at quite a few different facilities with quite a few therapists....but I've NEVER encountered physical therapists as useless as ours!
They will not transfer residents by themselves. You're physical therapists...you really need to come get an aide in the middle of dinner to help you transfer someone when there are four therapists in the room? REALLY?
THey don't have any kind of schedule that they follow, so at any time during your shift, they might come and take a resident without telling you, or worse, you'll get someone laid down and changed because they like to lay down early, and five minutes later they're following you down the hallway yelling at you for so and so being in bed.
On top of those annoyances, they are SO patronizing. One day, we were short staffed and I had 17 total care residents to myself. I became annoyed when one of the therapists kept bothering me for things, and she had the nerve to tell me "Well, I'm just as busy as you guys are!!!" Really? You work with about 5 residents a day, doing mostly range of motion and applying splints. How dare you compare that to what I do!
My absolute favorite was the day we all got to sit through a 20 minute inservice on how to wash a resident's hands. I wish I was kidding.
Oh, and I forgot one - the same old witch therapist who one day chewed me out because one of our residents had some slobber on his face (we take care of the disabled, many of them drool fairly constantly), saying that it was neglectful to not make sure his face is clean at all times (and I clean their faces as often as possible, it's just not possible to stand in a room and wipe a face all day long...) She brought the same resident back from therapy and left a pair of scissors sitting in his lap, clearly labeled "therapy". This is a mentally retarded, physically handicapped child, mind you. Yeah, I'm the neglectful one, here.
Our therapy department is the same way. I have never worked in any other nursing home so I didn't know if they were like that everywhere or not. But they act like they're at the top of the food chain. They come through the unit bossing everyone around, taking people without telling anyone (because getting fitted for a splint is so much more important than getting your pants changed or taking meds on time) and yes, they are soooo patronizing. Just because I'm a CNA doesn't mean I'm stupid and need simple things explained to me; I just don't have a rich mommy and daddy to send me to school for free like you did! Then when they stop you in the hallway and you're clearly in a hurry they speak really slowly like you won't understand them if they talk normally. One time I forgot my gait belt so I swiped one of the extra ones and it was labelled for a different unit. A therapist pasted this look of fake concern on her face and said, "Are you aware that your gait belt says East on it?" I said, "Oh does it? I don't know how to read. I've been waiting my whole life for someone like you to come around and teach me. Give me your wisdom!" I got a talking-to for that. lol.
I know it's been mentioned about 8,734,816,349,817,818,273,664 times on this forum already, but family members that stand in the doorway or go stand at the nurse's station instead of encouraging the patient to put on the call light IRK ME TO NO END. I want to purposely run down the hall with a Hoyer or med cart and "accidently" smash their feet or knock them over on the way past. I wish they understood that rather than prompting me to take care of mom/dad/husband/wife's needs more quickly, it makes me ignore them longer. I WILL answer every other call light before I come to you. So... TURN YOURSELF AROUND AND GET BACK IN THE ROOM. Most of the time, it was something stupid that they could have done themselves anyway. Can't win for losing.
This one is just petty, I know, but there is a male nurse on my floor that never ever wears a dang undershirt under his scrub top, which means we are all constantly treated to the view of his many tufts of thick white chest hair popping out of his neckline all shift long. Sigh. Dude, just cover it up. Please? Pretty please?!? You're grossing me out and if you didn't talk to every CNA as though we were born yesterday, I'd cut you some slack, but you're a condescending ass on top of your inadequate hygeine and coverage.
Either ditch the attitude or quit showing your goods.
Ugh u nailed it! The activities dept. makes me soo mad! I remember one Sunday I worked day shift & the activities coordinator demanded that I get everyone out of their rooms b/c they "must attend church". Um seriously, they are grown adults, they can make their own choices. And the toileting thing makes me mad too!!!
Activities doesn't anger me, they just don't understand the principles of care that certified, licensed, and registered staff follow. I like activities for the fact they socialize and encourage the residents outside of their typical daily care, which is a great thing.
If activities every tried to DEMAND me to get someone out of their room for church I'd honestly laugh at them. I'd just suggest we can try and encourage the pt. to do what you wish but DEMAND? Haha. No. Doesn't work like that. They have rights.
I'm a CNA student and I think one of my biggest things is when we go to clinicals and the CNAs are rude or they clearly don't care much about the resident!! On the first day of clinicals, we were being showed how to do a procedure and a CNA put the dirty depends on the floor and she said "Oh, by the way. Don't put anything on the floor! HAHA." We were students on the first day of clinicals, you would think they'd want to teach us the right way. They kept telling us things they were "supposed" to do, but they weren't doing them. I was thinking why not do it right and give these people the care they deserve?!
My pet peeve is mostly nurses or therapists who come in resident's room whom I'm caring for to tell me someone else needs to get on the toilet. I get to each resident when I can but I'm not the bionic woman! I can't be in 3 places at once. Is it hard to put them on the toilet and at least inform me to check on them. But I'm just an aide, I'm supposed to jump when they ask and go "how high?"
???ohnoesssss!!!" Hmm, well Mrs. Smith is 97 years old and every now and then she decides she wants a nap. 
fuzzywuzzy, CNA
1,816 Posts
Old thread, but my pet peeve right now is getting someone dressed in the morning and having to untangle a big old rat's nest because the beautiful hairdo I did up for them yesterday never got taken out and now the hair is wrapped around elastics or clips or combs. Who here goes to bed with plastic hairpieces on the back of their head? I'm thinking no one! I do people's hair because I don't want my residents looking like slobs... I don't do it just to make things harder for 2nd shift.
Also can't stand the lack of respect for people's things. I know accidents happen but no one at my work can have a piece of jewelry for more than 2 weeks before it gets broken. On the rare occasion that a hair accessory DOES make it out of someone's hair at night, it's never seen again. Or you find it on the floor the next day, stepped on. Buttons get ripped off shirts, sweaters get sent to laundry with brooches still pinned on, and necklaces get forcibly pulled over people's heads instead of by unhooking the clasp. And then there are the clothes that get jammed in a wrinkled heap at the bottom of the closets. Someone's shampoo or mouthwash spills in a drawer and no one cleans it up and it makes a sticky or moldy mess all over their stuff. COME ON.