Archive for October, 2011

This is an age old question: Should CNA’s pass meds? What if we had more training? What if the states mandated that the practice of CNAs include passing routine medications as delegated by the nurse?

Forbes has an article up about this very subject:

Frail seniors, as well as adults with disabilities, often need help with routine medical care such as taking pills, receiving injections, getting oxygen, or managing catheters. Traditionally, this assistance has been provided only by nurses. But, especially for people living at home or even in assisted living facilities, having a nurse provide this routine care is prohibitively expensive and can lead to long delays in getting assistance. As a result, states are increasingly permitting home health aides or certified nursing assistants to take on these responsibilities.

Personally I don’t see where I would have the time to collect meds and pass them. If a system could be set up that made this process very simple and involve very little time, I think it could work.

Articles like this leave me speechless. A man volunteered at a nursing home for years without any problem. One day he witnessed an abusive occurrence. He reported this. He started seeing more abuse and continued to report.

His story is here.

For the first time, he was told he couldn’t visit the nursing home, that it constituted trespassing. Feeling that the residents had the right to have visitors, on January 26, 2011, Edmund disobeyed those orders, and found himself arrested. He spent time in jail at taxpayer expense. He had never been arrested before.

It’s too bad this gentleman had to experience all of this. Doing the right thing can be difficult when you’re up against big corporations and especially nursing home chains. We need to support those who have the guts to speak up. Support can mean cheering them on, assisting with paying for legal help, etc.

I’ve been doing this work for over 20 years now and had my unfair share of injuries while performing my duties. I have often heard bosses moan and groan about worker comp rates and cost loss problems. Those of us who work in this field KNOW getting hurt on the job is almost…part of the job at times.

An article here validates this:

We’ve seen reality shows featuring dirty jobs, cops and coal miners. I wonder if it’s time for one showing a day-in-the-life of nursing home workers. Most of us don’t give much thought to what goes on inside of nursing homes, that is until a friend or family member needs to reside in one. What might appear as a quiet, slow-paced, restful setting is usually a stress-filled, physically-demanding environment for the people who work in them. Lifting and moving patients from beds, toilets, recliners, showers, and wheelchairs can cause all sorts of injuries, but then throw on top of that, the body fluids and infectious agents, staffing shortages, and violent patients and family members. On second thought, it’s probably not a tv show that would attract many viewers.

I think it would be good to have a reality show on Life in The Nursing Home. A Day In The Life of a Nursing Home Worker.