National Nursing Assistants Week, June 16-23, 2011

I didn’t want the week to go by without giving a “shout out” to our Nursing Assistants.  You work so hard and your job is so important!

Some thoughts and experiences on CNAs:

• Prior to graduate school, I worked in a residential setting for adolescent girls with behavior problems.  My role was similar to that of a CNA, and because I spent a huge amount of time with the girls, I knew them very well.  I remember sneaking into the charts to read consults done by the psychologist and finding important information about why the children were the way they were and how to work with them because of it, and I thought, “Well, it would have been nice if someone had told me this!” I would have approached the children differently because of it.  
• In one of the psychiatric hospitals I worked at later in my career, the psychiatrist who led our team wouldn’t start morning report on the unit without a CNA-equivalent being there, because important information would have been lost.  
• A quote from a resident reflecting on her experiences with nursing assistants, spoken years ago: “Some of them are angels sent from Heaven.  Others — from Hell.”
• Let’s give our CNAs the tools to be Angels.