Fixing The Problems CNA’s Face at Work
Posted by Patti on February 18th, 2008 / 
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Over at the PHI blog, Elise shares an interview of Barbara Bowers with readers. It’s pertinent here as well. Barbara is a tireless advocate for CNA’s and direct care givers- advocating better working conditions and wages among other things.
Nurture relationships between direct-care workers and the people they care for. “Those relationships are the most important thing to people in long-term care. That I’ve heard from the first day, and hear over and over again,” she says. “We know that, yet we still don’t seem to do much about it. We still don’t even have permanent assignments in lots of places.”
Show more respect for direct-care workers. “I think we need to better understand how to be supportive of CNAs,” she says. “I still hear all the time that CNAs feel like they’re looked down on, scolded publicly, humiliated. The nurses doing that don’t realize they’re doing it at all – they don’t mean to do it. I think they actually have a tremendous amount of respect for CNAs. They just don’t know how to supervise.”Improve wage, benefits, and staffing ratios. “Certainly we need more staffing and we need more money,” she says. “I don’t know if we need any more studies to tell us people would be happier if they got paid better and they got better benefits – we just need to do something about it.”
Give CNAs more control over their work. “I don’t know if we know enough about how to better organize the work so CNAs can get more control over their work flow, so they can do what they know they need to do.” Hiring enough people is part of it, she says, but that’s not the only factor. “It’s also things like how they’re supervised, how they’re trained.”
At another time I will further address some of the points listed here…I think there’s a lot more to all this that needs to be spoken about.
February 18th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Abig problem with Barbara’s article:
Her bit about nurses and supervising. That they’re not bad people. Well yes some of them just are that and nothing else. Nurses can be the most controll freaks of any profession. Control over the aides and the resident. Over other human beings whoom the nurses are supposed to advocate and care for. They take an oath to do no harm. Yet they do so every day in nursing homes.
They do realize exactly what they are doing. Go over to Allnurses.com and read the things they say about we CNA’s- did you know we’re MUTTS according to one RN? Yes we are. And that’s the prevailing attitude. Respect? Ha. A joke.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Hey Cheryl..I agree with some of your points. I plan to write a post about this too…
I was very taken aback by the ALLNURSE forum where aides were indeed referred to as dogs. It pissed me off to be quite honest. Much of the rhetoric over there is negative and it’s why I will never be a nurse: More then not, they are nasty old crotches who don’t like what they do. LOL I’ll stay a happy aide thank you very much!
February 19th, 2008 at 12:07 am
How can you handle a situation when a resident is verbaly abusing the cna?
February 27th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Michelle when a resident is verbally abusing another, we have to step in and redirect. If the resident is “with it”- we tell them they are being abusive. If the resident is not, we remove them. We act as referrees many times.
As for CNA abuse, again, same thing. We have a right to be treated with respect. We should expect this and insist upon it. With demented residents though it is hard. They are not in their right mind.
February 27th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Cheryl is correct. Sometimes residents don’t realize they are being…rude and demanding. They get so caught up in their illnesses and problems they forget how they come across. Others, though, know very well how they are behaving. Tell them it’s not acceptable. Just like that. Most times this works…and I would certainly let the nurses know you did this. I would NOT ask them to do this, nor would I ask them before doing this. When we do that, we’re asking to be mistreated for a long time. Some nurses will not advocate for the aides…