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Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) form the centerpiece of the formal long term care system. These front-line, professional caregivers provide hands-on care, supervision, and emotional support to millions of Americans with chronic illness and disabilities. They work primarily in nursing homes although increasingly, they are employed in other residential settings and in private homes. The care they provide is intimate and personal. It is also increasingly complex and frequently both physically and emotionally challenging. Because of their ongoing, daily contact with the care recipient and the relationships that usually develop between the worker and the resident/client, these caregivers are the “eyes and ears” of the care system. In addition to helping with a range of activities of daily living, CNAs provide the personal interaction that is essential to quality of life as well as care for disabled individuals and their families. Entire articles are available only in CNAToday magazine, click here to subscribe Improving Nutrition & Hydration Care in LTC Facilities: Tips to Prevent Dehydration & Unintended Weight Loss The incidence of malnutrition and dehydration in the nursing home population remains a problem even after the publicity it has received in the past few years. An estimated 35-85% of nursing home residents suffer from malnutrition or dehydration. Entire articles are available only in CNAToday magazine, click here to subscribe The Elusive Male Nursing Assistant How many nursing assistants at your facility are of the male gender? How many male nursing assistants do you know? I’m willing to bet the answer to each of these questions for you is “not many.” According to most surveys, 15 percent of CNAs are male while 85 percent of the CNA work force is female. Ever wonder why that is? I have wondered and have taken the time to look into the subject. Having been a male CNA for around 13 years, I have often felt quite outnumbered and misunderstood. Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed my tour of duty as an angel of mercy. There is nothing I can think of that I would trade for the years I spent providing care and assistance to the elderly and infirmed. In my own personal experience as a CNA, I was often asked to leave my assigned hall to go and transfer a resident, move a heavy piece of equipment, or even talk to an agitated male resident. The ladies on staff felt that the agitated resident might feel they should listen to me and calm down because I was a man. This always distressed me. One of the last things I wanted to happen was for a resident to feel threatened by me or obligated to do as I said. I would be told again and again, “That’s for you to do, you’re the man here.” At the time, my general response would be something like “Did the Women’s Rights Movement slip past you? You are capable of doing anything that I am capable of doing.” Entire articles are available only in CNAToday magazine, click here to subscribe In the Disney movie “Return to Never Land,” Peter Pan journeys back to London after an absence of many years to find that Wendy is grown up and has children of her own. For everyone on the island of Never-Never Land, aging is a fact of life that even Disney can admit. However, much of American life and culture denies the reality of aging. But when it comes to health care, the consequences of age denial can be downright dangerous. More than 20 years ago, the eminent geriatrician and author Dr. Robert N. Butler coined the term “Peter Pan Medicine” to describe age-denial in health care and medical education in the United States. Training doctors and nurses to treat one disease at a time in otherwise healthy and resilient patients is relatively easy, he explained. But as adults grow older, there are complications and changes – physiological, psychological and social – that require specialized training to provide the best possible care and achieve the most desirable health outcome. Entire articles are available only in CNAToday magazine, click here to subscribe |
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