This week marks the halfway point of my CNA program and boy the last month has just flown by. Time is a causality of my life; it’s either slipping away or putting a down payment on my future with a few moments of R+R here and there.
To give you a quick rundown, over the last month, on Monday-Thursday nights from 5:30pm-9:30pm, I’ve spent my time in the basement of Truman College hanging out with six bed-ridden and very sick dummies. Our CNA team cares for our dummy patients and often talks to them in what I’m now going to start calling CNA talk, which is something akin to Infant-Directed (baby) talk. It’s quiet and calm, and hopefully reassuring that we know what we are doing even when we don’t. We’ve covered 41 chapters over the last month and learned many, many procedures. I honestly have no idea how my classmates who are holding down grown-up jobs are keeping up, because between reading, studying, and homework, this one class has become a fulltime job for me. If I was asked to sum up the responsibilities of a CNA in one sentence I would say, “Our aim is to provide comfort and dignity for patients while helping them to live and function at their optimal level.” We accomplish this by focusing on three primary areas: infection control and patient safety, transportation, and personal care. Infection control and patient safety are really givens for all members of the health team, which also includes nurses, doctors, and other specialists who come to a patient’s aid. CNAs are however the heavy lifters, figuratively and often quite literally, when it comes to moving a patient from one place to another and helping individuals with their most basic needs. How this all comes together is through the ‘Care Plan’, which is a personalized agenda of care for each patient or resident. The ‘Care Plan’ is created primarily by the nurse using doctor’s orders, observations, and feedback from CNAs and other health team members. From there, nurses delegate tasks and assignments to other nurses and CNAs. We have learned some pretty cool things this semester. One of the first things we tackled was basic life support (BLS). BLS includes CPR, use of an automated external defibrillator (AED), and the Heimlich maneuver. These are basic skills used to aid people in dark moments they are fighting to stay alive. A lot of what we have learned is used to observe and report back to the nurse. We are trained to take vital signs (temperature, blood pressure, pulse and respiratory rate). We also have covered many disorders we may encounter and signs of illness we should chart and communicate to the nurse. This information is helpful to track patients’ progress as well as alert the nurse about important changes in a patients’ wellbeing. All of this helps the nurse outline future care to be given. The bread and butter of CNA work is direct patient interaction and assistance with what are called activities of daily living (ADLs). ADLs are things that you and I do independently each and every day but likely take our ability to do so for granted. This includes getting out of bed, grooming, personal hygiene, feeding ourselves, getting dressed, moving around, elimination, ect. There are many more examples I could give, and there is a procedure for everything that focuses on respecting a patient’s privacy, autonomy, and decency. Some cool things I now know how to do include changing linens and making a fresh bed with someone it, giving a bed bath, and how to turn patients in bed or help them walk safely from one place to another. While the skills we’ve learned are all very important, the bigger lesson I’ve taken away is that those of us with good mental and physical health should be grateful for our autonomy and personal freedoms. I am looking forward to moving to the clinical portion of the course and putting these skills into practice. I’m also looking forward to the opportunity to help empower individuals that may feel disenfranchised with their current situation. I love the fact that my attitude in clinicals and towards the work I will be performing will have a direct impact on the wellbeing of others. Healthcare provides an amazing and humbling environment that gives individuals daily opportunities to serve and help others feel better about themselves physically and mentally. I’m glad that one of my targeted nursing schools requires completion of a CNA program. I know it has helped reassure me that I am entering the correct career path by giving me a better glimpse of my future. If someone was uncomfortable with the work we do in lab and in the clinical setting, they could change plans before committing to nursing school. Having a CNA pre-requisite also weeds out people who might not be serious about patient care and simply looking for a fast track to a well paying job. It provides an extra roadblock to see who is willing to navigate that course. CNA courses also aren’t cheap, my program is on the low end and it cost about $1,000 with books and supplies. Most importantly, I’ve viewed this program and experience as foundational knowledge to help prepare me for the next level. I would like to find some study to see if people that take CNA programs are more successful at nursing school and passing the NCLEX (national nurse licensing exam). It wouldn’t be surprising to me. Many people after completing a CNA course will go on to work in a healthcare setting before and during nursing school and gain more skills and knowledge as a base of understanding. I knew when I embarked on this path it was going to be a long road. 2015 has some huge milestones in store for me though, and entering and completing the clinical portion of the CNA course will definitely be one. Passing the CNA licensing exam and securing a healthcare position will be the next couple after that. It should be a great year ahead!!
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1. Through meiosis every gamete we produce is unique. Women are born with 2 million immature eggs. Men produce 100 million sperm a day and more than 2 trillion in a lifetime.
2. It’s a good thing we produce so many because it turns out our gametes aren’t very reliable. Up to 60% of sperm produced can be non-functional. At puberty, 80% of a woman’s eggs have already died, and during her lifetime only 0.1% (400) of her remaining eggs will be ovulated. 3. The egg must be fertilized within a very small window. If it is not fertilized within a couple hours of being ovulated it will die. 4. The female reproductive organs are an extremely hostile environment for sperm. Her immune response can be triggered to a foreign body, the vagina is acidic and can kill sperm. Cilia (small hairs) in the fallopian tubes capture sperm as well. 5. The cervix is only passable for sperm a few days a month during ovulation. The rest of the time mucous protects the entrance to the uterus. Only when the right hormones are present, are small channels created allowing sperm to pass through one by one. 6. Normally it would take sperm 2 days to swim 6 inches through the uterus to reach an egg in the fallopian tubes. This would waste valuable time and limited energy that sperm have. However during menstruation, undulations of the uterus shorten this trip to 30 minutes. 7. The egg is highly protected and the body provides barriers for sperm to reach it. Outer layers of chaperone cells surrounding the egg only allow a few sperm through. 8. Beneath the layers of chaperone cells, a thick membrane called the zona protects the egg. Proteins on the sperm cap must match precisely to proteins on the zona to allow the sperm to enter the egg. 9. 50% of fertilized eggs fail to develop properly and the body aborts the pregnancy early on. 10. If the fertilized egg survives long enough to become a blastocyst, it could be attacked by the mother’s own immune system when the blastocyst tries to implant into the uterus wall. 11. What starts out as a handful of cells, develops into tissues, organs, and body parts. Every cell has the same 46 chromosomes containing the same genes and the same unique DNA in all 26 billion cells of a newborn. 12. As the cells multiply, they “know” based on their location in the embryo and fetus what they are to become. This is possible because cells can communicate with chemical signals. These chemical signals turn on and off particular genes that leads to specialized tissues and organs. 13. Gene SRY on the Y chromosome is thought to be responsible for sending instructions for a developing 6-week-old embryo to start becoming a boy. This is the only time this gene is active in a man’s life and the gene is only turned on for a couple of days. 14. At 6 months a fetus needs so much fat the mother often cannot keep up. This fat is being used to form myelin sheaths around neurons in our brains. Myelin sheaths are a fatty covering that protects the neuron and increases the speed nerve signals can travel 100 times. 15. Human birth is extremely dangerous compared to other species. This is true for both the mother and the baby and is due to our large head size in comparison to our bodies, which makes delivery a challenge and risk. This information was taken from a PBS/NOVA film called "Life's Greatest Miracle" which aired Nov 20, 2001. If you find this stuff interesting you can watch the full video at the link below. It really is quite an incredible production, the shots they get of development inside the womb are amazing. **Disclaimer** The film is a bit graphic at the end and shows an actual pregnancy so if that isn't something you want to see, avoid the last 5 minutes or so. My guess is if you read all 15 facts and decided to watch the movie, you probably are prepared to see something of that nature though anyways. :) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/life-greatest-miracle.html CNA. My smartphone and MacBook have no idea what this acronym means. Their best guess is always ‘CAN’. For those of you scratching your heads, a CNA is a Certified Nurse Assistant and is the health and nursing teams’ equivalent of starting out in the Operations department at a rising .com or Fortune 500 company.
This semester I decided to knock out a CNA training course, a requirement for a nursing school I am targeting. If you’d asked me back in November, I would have told you I was a little worried about how exactly I was going to navigate working full-time, and completing this part of my journey. CNA courses are compacted over half a semester and demand 16 hours a week in lab/lecture, and 21 hours a week once you get to clinicals. However, due to a generous and timely gift of free-time and greenbacks from my former employer, the tracks ahead are clear and this train has left the station!! I will complete the CNA course March 21st, after which I will be prepared to sit for the state CNA licensing exam and be able to secure an entry-level health team position in a hospital. For those of you keeping score, yes I am starting back at the bottom not only with my education, but also with my professional pursuits. So far it’s cost me a few thousand dollars, 5 semesters, and getting laid off; but I will have secured an Associates of Science degree, CNA licensure, and entry into the field I want to be in. It turns out one man’s severance is another man’s sabbatical. CNAs are not a glorious position. We are constantly told in our training, we are not to make decisions about a patient’s care. We are not to assess a patient’s condition. We are there to perform delegated tasks from the nurse. We are there to observe and report to the nurse. The irony in all this is that CNAs spend the most time with the patients out of any member of the health team. We are the front lines in an unsexy position that demands a lot of work and knowledge for limited pay. If that sounds a lot like any entry level-position you are currently in or have held in the past, that’s because it is basically the same game in a different industry. I’ve spent a decent amount of time since getting laid off in December reflecting on my experiences with my former company and pondering what lessons I could take forward. As I thought about what to write in this post, I realized that maybe my smartphone is actually on to something when it autocorrects CNA to ‘CAN’. No one likes to be at the bottom. We have many experiences with this throughout our lives when we move on to middle school, high school or college. We get fired or laid off. We become newlyweds, or newly divorced. We start a new job or a family. While some of these events are positive, they all involve discomfort, anxiety, and maybe a little self-doubt. It’s so easy to get down on ourselves and discouraged with events in our lives or stations we find ourselves at. Negativity and stress are all around us constantly. From time to time I hit the panic button with my future plans when I am stressed with school or life. It’s easy to start spinning wheels that I haven’t even gotten to the most challenging part of my adventure, actual nursing school, or dwell on the limitations and constraints this path puts on me. The next thoughts are usually “Can you do this?”, “How will you do this?”, “Do you want to do this?”; down the rabbit hole it goes. When people are faced with obstacles or challenges in their life there are only two responses. ‘I CAN’ or ‘I can’t.’ I think there’s a lot to the idea of attitude and how it carries us through things. When I first started in the corporate world, there was a brief moment in my entry-level job training where I felt legitimately conned. The job posting had a lot of fluff to it and I remember verbally saying half way through to my trainer, “This is it?”, “This is all we do, punch data into different windows, click here, click there?” I had been waiting for the big reveal, the aha moment about why I was really hired. It never came. In that moment I decided that ‘I CAN’. ‘I CAN’ be the best data entry specialist on this team. ‘I CAN’ be the best in this moment with the cards I was dealt. I chose not to cut corners with work, follow processes, and look for opportunities to go above and beyond what was required. It was that attitude that padded my reputation and brand with others and opened up more doors for me within the company. Thankfully this time around as I restart my career, I feel like I have a better idea of what exactly I am getting myself into and have clearer vision with my path, but that attitude is something I want to continue bringing to the table. I don’t have a lot of doubts about my intellectual ability to learn and understand the procedures and policies of healthcare in the CNA or nursing role. However I do know that a personal challenge for me will be listening and empathizing with individuals dealing with very difficult situations. This is going to be something I learn to say ‘I CAN’ to. If I had to pick an area I struggled with at my last job, it would be verbal communication. It wasn’t something I readily practiced and I don’t always present my thoughts in a clear and concise manner. Many times I know what I am trying to say in my head, and bank on the idea that people will think the same way I do, which I have learned in many instances isn’t the case. Other times I didn’t have the confidence in myself, and ultimately my message, which is a rocky place to start communication from. As a CNA in training, my clinical hours will be completed at a long-term care facility, or what most people would call a nursing home. I’m grateful for the foundational knowledge I am learning through this program, but I am more grateful for the hands on practice in lab and the upcoming real-life practice in clinicals. I look forward to seeing and learning first hand from those with more experience while developing my own flavor of compassion and care along the way. There’s value in starting out from the bottom in any pursuit. It’s a place where you can learn the culture and best practices while having ample room to learn and make mistakes. It’s an environment where you can hedge weaknesses on your strengths and say ‘I CAN’ to facing new challenges and learning new skills. When it comes down to it, anything we want in life takes work. It also takes vision and sacrifice and many times some risk. These are the costs of things that are good. They are the costs of learning and growth and are things that we should all learn to say ‘I CAN’ to no matter how young or old we are. |
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September 2018
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