A CNA has to do a lot as part of their job helping nurses. If you become a CNA, you will have some things to do, and some things you won’t be doing. It all comes down to administering great care to your patients, and helping doctors and nurses to administer their level of care. While the doctors and nurses identify the issues and diagnosis of a patient’s health, you will be the one on the front lines keeping the patient’s comfortable and being compassionate with them throughout all your daily interactions.
What Type of Care does a CNA Provide?
Care comes in many forms, from getting information and vital sign info and recording it properly all the way to changing the sheets on the bed, bathing patients, and serving them their meals. Your duties will be contingent on what kind of medical establishment you work in. You will also need to provide different levels of care to different people based on their needs. For some, a nursing home is just for occasional bits of care and some community, while some others are going to need you for just about everything, including their basic hygiene.
CNAs and Medication Management
CNAs are not generally trained to administer medicine. While they can set up IV needles, RNs and LPNs are generally the ones who hook up the IV bags for the patient’s medicine. A CNA’s responsibilities are also never supposed to extend to working out dosages or getting the dosages, but they can administer medicines that are pre-measured and record the dispersal on the chart if ordered to do so.
Your employer can have you perform extra tasks not expressly in your job description; provided they are morally sound and you are trained to perform them. A CNA can only be asked to do a very small number of tasks with any sophistication to them, as opposed to a medical assistant. CNAs cannot administer injections; prepare paperwork for billing or anything that may cause harm to a patient.
A CNA can do some reasonable tasks if the patient asks. Plus, if the CNA is capable of performing the task, and it works with the standards of care and code of ethics, they have to perform it for the patient. Your knowledge, training and facility regulations will help you determine what you can do and when you will have to say no.
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