Certified Nursing Assistant

When I did an eight-hour shift, I would usually get there and get the report from the previous CNA. I would also start to answer any call lights, see what patients needed, make sure to check everyone who is incontinent and needs help with their diapers, make sure that they're dry and that people are constantly moving so that they don't get bed sores. That is really what you do is a lot of running around answering call lights. Then you also have got to make sure that you chart everything that you do so that it's up to date for the next CNA to come. For that eight hours, I would mostly stay on my feet constantly the whole time and I would say that a typical day is much busier than a typical night shift. So if you're willing to do night shifts, they're a little bit easier since everyone else is sleeping.

At least where I used to work, I worked the NOC shift, so I worked 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. And my typical day was, you know, show up, clock in before 6, and you get all of your reports from the CNA before you. They tell you about each resident, how they did throughout the day, any concerns that you should be having, any special precautions on them. Then you go straight into taking vital signs, so blood pressure, respirations, all of those things. And from there on out, it's, you know, getting everybody ready for bed, brushing their teeth, changing their clothes, and then answering every call light. You'll have Q2s, which means every two hours you have to change somebody or rotate them so that they don't get bed sores or any underlying issues like that. But it is a lot of just answering call lights and helping the nurses, and yeah, making sure people are alive and taken care of.

A typical day for me in the assisted living that I worked at was I would get there, we would spend like 15 minutes with the people from the shift before where they would kind of report to us, maybe even less, sometimes five, it kind of just depended on the day. Report to us anything we needed to know, any people who have passed away, any big things that happened during the last two shifts since the last time we came in, and then we would go from there and we would just answer call lights, we would help people to the bathroom, help people get changed, help people into bed, help people get meals, like whatever they needed, help people get to their activities, we would know which rooms of who needed to be where and when, and then once that shift was or that time had passed, we would then get back together with our graveyard shift and report to them, we would report on our devices the different cares that we administered and then repeat the next day.