Typical Job Responsibilities of a CNA Professional

Are you planning to become a Certified Nursing Assistant? Then, the first thing you should do is to get a good idea about the typical job duties of a nursing assistant. That will help you to make a wise decision in choosing your career.

The responsibilities of a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) are countless, because they are typically attending to the patients apart from assisting nurses and doctors, particularly in a healthcare unit. Typical Day in the life of a Certified Nursing Assistant involves attending many job duties from making a bed for the patient to presenting reports to nurses. A normal routine of a certified nursing assistant might go somewhat like this:

Assist in daily chores: Each morning they might assist the patients dress up if required, and aid these folks in whatever way to prepare for the day; this includes help and any kind of assistance in the bathroom also if required.  They might furthermore help in serving the patient’s breakfast if required. Particularly with the aged or extremely unwell patients, vitals usually have to be taken.  Occasionally, based on every individual patient, vitals may also mean hearing the lungs and heart and documenting the way the individual is breathing.

Assist in shifting: While in the noon, the Certified Nursing Assistants might assist with shifting the ill to and from their diverse appointments if required, do their mattresses and assist feeding them meal if needed.  Vitals typically have to be taken all over again with the extremely aged and/or ill patients.  At night, nursing assistants might aid put patients sleepwear on if necessary and assist to feed them dinner as well.  Vitals typically have to be taken once more in case of very aged as well as horribly ill patients. The Certified Nursing Assistants maybe required helping the patients with baths also maybe in the noon or by evening if the admitted patients are not capable of doing it themselves.  So, nursing assistants exist for the patient for all the basic requirements during the complete length of the day. Continue Reading »
A Typical Day in the life of a CNA

Duties of CNA in Nursing Homes

A certified nursing assistant gets an opportunity to work in close association with nursing home residents under the guidance of registered nurse.  In general, a CNA working in nursing home has to deal with the same resident patients for a long period and thus becomes more attached to those patients.

Placements of CNA in nursing homes
The Labor statistics bureau has stated that around 1.4 million individuals were placed as CNAs in 2006 and among them, 52 % were placed in residential care centers and nursing homes.

Duties of CNA
The major duties of certified nursing assistants working in the nursing home include aiding patients to take bath, dress and feed and to obtain vital signs.  Further they have to assist patients who had incontinent episodes and changes in the medical condition of patients have to be reported immediately to the concerned medical staff.

Work Environment
As the job of CNA is physically very demanding, the nursing assistant has to stand and walk for long hours.  In addition, patient work loads may be high.  So it is very significant for a nursing assistant to understand appropriate body mechanisms to decrease or avoid chances of getting back injury.

Education Requirements
To become a certified nursing assistant in a nursing home, the candidate has to possess a high school diploma.  High school vocational courses, employers and community colleges provide training to under go the state certification examination.  According to the guidelines of Federal Government, if CNAs has to be appointed in nursing homes, they must fulfill the competency examination and should have undergone professional training for at least seventy five hours.

CNA Salary
The Labor statistics bureau states that the average annual salary of a CNA is around $23,850.

How to prevent pressure sores?

As a certified nursing assistant, you have a huge responsibility of taking care of the patients.  You will be dealing with different kinds of patients with different types of diseases.  In plenty of cases, you would be dealing with patients who are not able to move and require constant care.  Patients who are not able to move tend to develop bedsores – also known as pressure sores.  Therefore, it becomes your foremost duty as a CNA to ensure that patients do not develop bedsores, since they can be very painful and cause a lot of discomfort.

Now, you need to understand how bedsores or pressure sores are caused.  In the case of patients who cannot move, there tends to be constant pressure on certain body parts while lying down.  Now these body parts are deprived of essential oxygen and because of this the muscle and tissue of that region start breaking down.  So it becomes essential for nursing assistants like you to keep a strict vigil on the patients and look for any kind of indication that may lead to bedsores.

There are plenty of other factors which contribute to bedsores.  Bed sores are also caused due to continuous friction on a specific body part.  One of the main reasons why patients contract bedsores is because they are not given a proper bath and their body parts are not washed properly.  It is important that patients are made to stay in a hygienic atmosphere.  Apart from this diabetic patients are also at a greater risk of contracting bedsores.  You would be surprised to find that individuals with blood circulation problems are also at a high risk of developing bedsores. Continue Reading »
Preventing Patient Bedsores

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CNA Job Description in Nursing Home

CNAs working in nursing homes have to deal with patients who are generally senior citizens, or others who need long term care, so their duties vary considerably from those working in hospitals and other health care facilities.  They need to develop a long term relationship with the patients, so being compassionate is an important trait required for this job.  Also they need to assist the patients in their daily routine activities, so the job is physically demanding.  If the CNA is placed in  community care, the work will keep them running through out the day.   But, wherever they are placed, they are expected to offer compassionate care in a very polite manner.

Regarding the continuing care community, a CNA has different types of duties like assisting the patients while walking or moving from one room to another in a wheel chair.  In general, patients need assistance while they move around in wheelchair from their rooms to activity room, dining hall or other areas.  Few other needs assistance while eating and other kind of activities performed in day to day life.  CNA working in nursing home will have to bathe most residents as the physical condition of those patients doesn’t allow them to carry out activities on their own.  Some patients will require help with toileting.  In some cases, CNA has to wear and change adult diapers for the residents.  Residents who don’t have the ability to move their body on the own has to be assisted by CNA to reposition every two hours in order to avoid bedsores.

Some residents have to be assisted to fulfill their grooming needs. Some patients have to be helped to brush, comb and makeup.  In men, CNA might have to assist while shaving and in cases, CNA has to shave the patient’s hair.  Few ladies might ask CNA to paint their nails or to assist them in putting different hair style.  The CNA some times has to change the resident’s linen as well as slight cleaning works.  The CNA will be instructed to perform duties similar to house keeping when they are appointed

The CNA also has the responsibility to oversee a patient while exercising.  If they are capable of exercising, the CNA has to watch them and observe their motion type.  The presence of CNA is important either to assist the patient in doing some difficult exercises or to report to the higher authority if any problem occurs while exercising.  But, the CNA can’t act upon their choices; they will be guided by a professional medical staff.

As a certified nursing assistant, they have to consider vital signs of the nursing home patients whenever necessary.  They include checking temperature and blood pressure.  The CNA might have to observe and report the food intake of nursing home residents. Both the solid and liquid form of food must be noted and reported.  Some times, CNA might assist to evaluate readings of blood pressure.  If the residents of nursing home become ill or gets hurt, the CNA has to report to the higher authority immediately and see to that the patient is being addressed as soon as possible.  Though we have come across a varied range of duties, it is not mandatory to perform all of them regularly.  The duties of CNA vary depending on the nursing home they are placed.

A Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) has to perform a variety of duties as they are in maximum contact with the patients.  CNAs have many responsibilities as they are more close to patients then even the nurses or doctors.

A typical day as a CNA would be something like as follows,

In the morning, a CNA will have to help patients dress up and help them in any of their morning tasks.  This includes helping in the bathroom especially in the case of elderly and extremely ill patients.  They would be required to feed people who can’t feed themselves.  They will have to take vitals for serious and old patients.  This might also require listening to the lungs and heart, also the recording of the breathing of the patient.

As the afternoon progresses CNAs would help to transfer patients to the different appointments.  They would have to pass out linens and reposition patients if need be.  Also, they will have to make the patients bed and feed lunch if need be.  Vitals have to be taken for very sick and very old patients.  They would also have to walk the patients who can not. Continue Reading »
Typical Day as a CNA

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