The Daily Jobs of a Certified Nursing Assistant
Those who are considering becoming certified nursing assistants are usually given the major details of what their job comprises when they train in schools. The schools however, cannot tell you the exact impact of what it means to work as a certified nursing assistant in a healthcare setting like a hospital or a long term care facility. Theory alone is not sufficient to show you what a difference your presence will make in rehabilitating a patient back to health. People often take nursing assistants for granted because their job is not as glamorous or as well reimbursed as nurses, but they don’t know that without nursing assistants to constantly aid the nurses, patient care would suffer and many patients would suffer from the hands of understaffed and overworked nurses.
As soon as a nursing assistant punches in for work, she makes sure that the patients she will be working with are comfortable. During this time, she can take care of their activities of daily living such as changing clothes, brushing teeth, feeding them their daily share and sometimes even bathing the patient. For patients who chronically bed ridden, the nursing assistant performs range of motion exercises along with their morning care duties. They make sure that a patient remains safe at all times by raising the side rails and watching out for any objects that could cause bed sores. During times when a doctor comes in to examine a patient, the nursing assistant ensures privacy of the patient by providing drapes. Some hospitals allow nursing assistants to take the vital signs of the patient and then reporting this directly to the staff nurse. Interacting with the client on a day to day basis is an important task to accomplish. They serve as a form of social interaction for those deprived of social companionship due to the severity of their illness.
Serving people to aid them during their most trying times can take its’ toll on nursing assistants, who earn roughly around $30,000 a year. But once they see a patient walk out of those doors, a certain sense of job satisfaction is eminent. The salary is not much, but it is above minimum wage and they even get wonderful insurance and retirement packages.
Training to become a certified nursing assistant can take as long as 4- 12 weeks in a facility. Hospitals can train you for as little as two weeks to ensure you get the basic concepts of your job, but studying in community colleges can take months to complete.
Getting jobs as a nursing assistant won’t be hard as the healthcare industry needs them to properly divide the work in the hospital. In order to get a higher than most salary however, nursing assistants need experience and certification. Those who have worked for a year or more in an acute health care setting can expect an easier time locating for an employer to higher them. Becoming a certified nursing assistant will also prove to employers that your have passed the minimum qualifications in order to work.
