Ever see those commercials for schools that call themselves colleges? ” Come to our school and become a doctors assistant!”. Wow! In only two short years you too can be a doctors assistant. In my area we even have a commercial that shows a doctor entering the exam room to see a patient. She is met at the door by her assistant who tells her that she has already run some tests on the patient. The doctor is very impressed and thanks her and then asks where she learned to do all that. The answer from the assistant is of course this “college” is where she learned it all. They then tell you that you too can earn the respect of the medical community and they will even offer job placement after graduation.
The truth is that every doctors office I have ever gone to uses nurses for assistants. People that take these classes upon graduation find themselves at least ten thousand dollars in debt to the school and the only jobs that they are offered or can get are Certified Nurses Assistants, or CNA’s. To further dash the hope of a great career, most hospitals I know do not hire CNA’s, A few years ago many of them even stopped hiring Licensed Practical Nurses or LPN’s, and only want Registered Nurses or RN’s.
This only leaves one place that I know of that hires CNA’s and those are nursing homes. I don’t want to make it sound like CNA’s are worthless. They are not. I have worked with the most helpful, wonderful, and caring CNA’s ever. I believe the difference between the good ones and the bad ones is that the better ones knew what they would be doing on the job after graduation. The bad ones believed the commercials and are somewhat bitter about wasting all that time and money so they could end up making minimum wage for the dirtiest and most thankless job around.
Nursing homes themselves are partly to blame because in the owners desperation to earn the almighty dollar they not only pay very low, but they will only schedule whatever the minimum ratio of aides to residents are. In my state it’s one aide to every ten or eleven residents.
On a skilled care floor or unit, you have all the residents that cannot do even the simple daily tasks, like going to the bathroom, dressing, showering, or feeding. The aide is put under a lot of pressure to sometimes clean urine and feces from the resident and the bedding, then to shower and dress the resident and assist in feeding, helping them transfer from bed to chair to toilet and back to chair and bed. Multiply all that by ten or eleven. Now imagine that those resident needs are ongoing and just because you have finished one does not mean they no longer need you just because you’re doing that all over again with another resident.
The point is simple.
- You’ve got to love caring for the elderly and the dying.
- You need to know before enrolling in a school what your real job options will be.
- Nursing homes that are owned by individuals must pay more and add additional staff where needed.
- Those that find themselves stuck in a job that they hate must either find a new job, or go back to school, a real school to better their situations.