1. 1. CNA Profession From InsideCertified Nursing Assistant, or as abreviated CNA, is a health care worker trained toperform certain medical procedures and assist with basic life needs. In the past 12 yearsI have worked for 8.5 years as CNA in all kind of facilities in the US health care systemand would like to share some of my insights as well as a few details on this extremeprofession - just another view from inside. One of the reasons is that I have repeatedlyseen people to quit this job shortly after they started it, just because they had little or noidea on real CNA work. Another reason is to make all other people aware that there arestill humans, who put care for others as first priority in their lives. In this publication I willdescribe the work environment and challenges in the most common place for all nursingassistants to work at - the nursing home.Nursing Homes ResidentsThere are people of all ages living in the nursing homes: elderly, who have lost ability totake care of themselves; handicapped; people with severe illnesses, bound in bed forthe remainder of their lives; humans artificially maintained to stay alive, just becausethey failed to take control of their lives and put someone else to take decisions on theirbehalf. But you can also find here individuals, purely abusing welfare system, since theyare too lazy to work. Most of these people do appreciate Nursing Assistants work andthe care given, but there also are some extremely difficult people, no one in the normalsociety outside wants to take care of, who can turn your life in real hell. Hence, it is veryimportant for the all CNA-s to have full control of their personality, ego and mind, beforegetting in trouble.Daily duties challengesAnyone, who has ever stepped beyond nursing homes lobby, has faced the more orless usual for each nursing home smell of urine and other body excretions. This is whatturns back many who want to start this profession and is the first challenge for all. Themain task for CNA-s is to assist residents with ADL ( activities of daily living ) andprovide all the routine care as: dressing and undressing the residents turning and repositioning bedridden residents feeding cleaning up residents body excretions ( urine, feces etc. ) bathing residents changing linen and making beds transferring residents from bed to wheelchairs or other chairs and vice versa answering residents calls for help observing residents conditions and reporting if there are any changes charting in special books for all the work doneThe Nursing Assistant job is accompanied with constant stress due to: lack of time: Remember, that you may have a dozen people ( normally for day
2. 2. shifts is 8-12 people ) and at certain times several of them could be calling you at the same time. working in an infectious environment: People in the nursing homes are prone to all kind of infections and infectious diseases are something common there. dealing with very difficult personalities, who are always "right" according to the law: Sometimes Nursing assistants could be exposed to extreme abuse from such patients. dealing with the administration and outside visitors: Some people want to promote their own ideas on the residents direct care that might be detrimental for the ones they are concerned about. Usually these are people, who have never had their hands on in this kind of work. dealing with problem co-workers: Many people bring their life problems to their work place, which affect more or less their co-workers. There are plenty of problems in a nursing home to bring more with you. Due to excessive and prolonged stress, some of the CNA-s simply burn out and turn to real danger for all others.As you can see from all of the above, the Nursing Assistant job is a very demanding,physically and emotionally, job that requires being always in higher state of body andmind to successfully complete all work and challenges. There is really lots of liftinginvolved in CNA work and back injures are very common among them. All these makeCNA profession one of the most extreme on the todays labor market.Finding Nursing assistant / CNA job1. Nursing homes. As I previously mentioned, the most common ( and best forbeginners ) place to start is a nursing home. I strongly recommend this for the simplereason that this is the place one can master most of the skills needed and, opposed tohome care, there is always co- worker to help in extreme situations ( and there areplenty of such on a daily basis ). There are two options to work in the nursing homes:being an employee there or working for a staffing agency. My preferred is the secondoption, but I also had periods of time as full time employee in a few nursing homes.Those were periods when I needed a stable income. There are three types ofemployees: full-time ( 32+ hours/week ), part-time ( certain days of the week or week-end ) and flexible ( also called "pool" or "PRN" ), as needed.What is the difference between being an employee and working for agency?Working for a staffing agency means, you should be able and ready: to drive to different places in a wide area to work any shift in order to make sufficient number of hours to quickly adapt to different environment, equipment, paperwork and policies ( nursing homes policies differ from each other ).From the above you can make the conclusion: "Why to work for agency, when it seemsto be more stressful?". Yes, it is more stressful, but at the same time helps you todevelop flexibility, better reaction and sense to all job related matters. The more placesand people you see, the wider your horizon is and the more qualified you become. Andanother point, for me personally, is that working at one and same spot for months is
3. 3. boring. And, with a staffing agency, your pay rates are usually higher. The normal payrate for Nursing Assistant / CNA jobs in the nursing homes is in the range of $ 9-12 /hourdepending on experience. At times, with agencies, I have gotten up to $ 16 / hour.Recently, here in Florida, the nursing homes use lesser and lesser staffing agencies, butthey still remain personnel source for hospitals and mainly for home care.2. Assisted living facilities.Many assisted living facilities, here in Florida, still hire CNA-s, but they usually have non-certified staff to care for their residents due to specifics of the work ( no medical careinvolved ). The CNA working there are usually certified in administering with medicationsand are called "med-techs". Of course their job could be combined: passing medicationsand residents direct care.3. Hospitals.Hospital CNA-s are rarely involved in intense physical work. Patients here come and gowithin short period of time and what they need is just a little help around. This kind ofwork includes lots of "light" tasks, walking around, taking vital signs and a lot of chartingon the computer. But some hospitals have long term care units ( for example for peoplewith tracheotomy on constant mechanical ventilation ) where the work is the same as inthe nursing homes.4. Home care.As I previously stated, this kind of CNA work is for experienced nursing assistants ONLY( lack of experience may have serious consequences and cause severe damages ). Theshift duration may vary from 1-2 hours up to 12 hours and the work may include all CNAduties from the nursing home. And since this is "one to one" care in patient privatehouses, the nursing assistants should be experts in their job as no helpers could beavailable around. The CNA-s also need to have excellent communication skills andpersonalities to promote medical care and easy the clients conditions. Such jobs couldbe obtained through Home Care Agencies of privately through newspapers adds orspecific websites ( Craigslist is the most common and used source ).5. Other job sites.These include: doctors offices, rehabilitation centers, special care facilities ( for addicts,behavior centers, Alzheimer centers and others ). They all have specific rules andrequire specific skills to be deployed.6. Hospice jobs.Hospice care is delivered to patients in hospitals, nursing homes, assisted livingfacilities, patents homes and hospice residences. Death is the single most importantevent in humans life on Earth. For this reason it should be taken care of by the mostloving, with open mind and heart, caregivers. Only those, who know about God Lovequalify for this kind of care. Only such caregivers can help patients in their last momentsin physical body to open for God and allow God to enter their heart and soul and finallyfree them. The most powerful prayer to experience Gods healing love is God Yoga andit could be forwarded to anybody.
4. 4. A good CNA is not the one who blindly obeys all the rules and regulations, but the onewho obeys the only commandment from God: "Love all!".Working as a CNA is of utmost spiritual benefit for all those practising it, since it is butpracticing love toward others in real life.. CNA work considerable speeds up individualsspiritual development and opens their hearts for all and for God above all. Therefore,often some of the nursing assistants start feeling God Love in their daily lives.Author Resource: Georgi Stanev is webmaster at a family website dedicated to sharehappy life recipes and offer free for download spring wallpapers as well as lovegreeting cards for all occasions in life.