We asked our Facebook fan CNAs for the most frustrating aspects of their jobs; check out some of their responses below…and sound off with your own in the comments!
8 frustrating things about being a CNA
1. “High patient ratios, feeling underappreciated, but most of all, nurses who won’t pay attention when you tell them something is up! As a CNA who is in nursing school, I have learned to recognize when something is not right, but too often the nurse shrugs me off and the patient suffers when it turns out that I was right in the long run.”
—Amelia Garner Shrader
2. “I have been a CNA for 16 years and I love my job! No, I do not want to be an RN or LPN! The most frustrating part of my job is the government telling our corporations how to staff their floors. Do they not understand that by giving us proper staffing, it would allow us to give our residents exceptional care? It would also minimize CNA burnout, abuse (emotional and physical) and work injuries. Since when is the minimum-possible the best way to go?”
—Kim Cugini
I also get frustrated with the state telling nursing homes how to staff, it is a lot of work, and the residents get frustrated when they have to wait until you can get to them, while you are with another resident. More CNA’s better care.
I’ve worked all shifts and currently on night shift so some frustrating things that I dealt with in 17 yrs of being a cna: that one cna that gets the patient all wild up and then you’re left to deal with the behaviors of the patient, having group sheets that aren’t updated & finding out that person went from being a hoyer to a sit to stand lift or that they went from a thickened liquid to thin liquids, but I think the most frustrating thing I have dealt with is that the 2nd shift nurse will wait until 9:45p to give a suppository to that one patient and you know it will be minutes after coming on that the patient will have a major blow out… and there is no linens in their room. And the other 8 things listed before mine, I will also agree with.
What makes it all worth wild is to get that one person who says Thank you for all you do, the smiles on that persons face, the families that think high of you.
But for me, I had once had 2 different jobs at the same time (one in home health and the other in a nursing home) and after this one client went to the hospice home, I would continue to visit this client. Anyways, it was right before Thanksgiving and I got stopped in the hall at the nursing home job by one of the family members (of the client that went to the hospice home)… found out that, that the guy wanted to see me. I went and talked to him & out of all of his caregivers, I was the one he wanted to ask me to be his New Years Eve date/caregiver to his grand daughters wedding. That was the best New Years that I had ever had.