Posted by a former cna (172.164.244.70) on November 28, 2000 at 16:06:37:
In Reply to: Re: Are you willing to have your voice heard to change your career field? posted by a former cna on November 28, 2000 at 15:59:58:
: : I hope you are. I am part of an organization that feels it is time for the frontline caregivers to raise their voice in protest for what is happening to us, and therefore to our patients. Our organization is for all RNs, LPNs, CNAs. If you are tired of not being able to provide the care that you know your patients deserve than the time has come to become involved with an organization that wants your voice to be heard! Each CNA, LPN and RN has a very important role in the healthcare system, we each provide an important aspect of patient care and we are all being overwhelmed bt poor patient to staff ratios and the use of mandatory overtime. Whether you hold a license or a certification you are accountable for your practice and poor management decisions made by non healthcare trained individuals and companies are putting our licenses and certification at risk by their practices. The desire to have a good bottom line puts not only us at risk but our patients. While CEOs of companies are making large amounts of money, the healthcare industry itself has facilities operating in the red, floors being closed, not enough beds in other areas of the country, and we want to know why! Why are a few profiting on our labor and the backs of our patients? Most of us give 110% while at work, yet we never seem to be able to provide enough. Everyone keeps talking about a severe nursing shortage but no one is telling the public that one of the cause for that shortage is the policies of managed care. Our working conditions are driving us and our co-workers out of our field, a good article on this is engineering a crisis which can be found at www.califnurses.org There is much interesting reading there. Please don't think that what is there will only impact nurses, CNAs may not carry the title of nurse, but everything in healthcare still affects YOU very much. In the past there are been very few organizations that have even attempted to speak for CNAs, we don't want to speak for you, we want you to speak for yourselves. Put your stories out there for the public to read. Let them know that if you have 12 patients on a day shift(and we all know that is only on a good day) in a nursing home with and hour and a half to get everyone up for breakfast that gives you only about 8 minutes per patient. Don't let administators continue to portray that it is incompetant help in nursing homes that result in malnutrition, dehydration and bedsores for the patients, it is the lack of appropriate staffing to do the care the way it should be done. It is time to take the gag off, how many of us have been told that we are not to tell our patients and families that we are short? Not only in LTC but also in the hospitals. We need to have all nursing groups out there in the publics eye so they know the real story. Please participate. Please see www.millionnursemarch.org together we can make a difference.
Way to go Helen,I don't think it could have been said better.
I quit (nursing ) because the folks above me(in their own minds) R.N.s&L.P.N.s; make C.N.A.s feel as if they are not part of the TEAMS.
Good Luck with what you are trying to do and I hope everyone will join with you and quit the fighting among themselves that just does not serve a purpose.