Doing away with CNAs in my hospital

[sylvie]

I live in Northern Maine and in the past week, our nurse manager came by and stated that she is thinking of starting to do away with the CNAs, hire more RNs (we are already short!!!) so our patient load is not as high and we can wash our own patient and basically have total patient care. I want some views and if anyone has peer reviewed articles on the subject, I would very much appreciate that input also. Thank You

[cassioo]

I don't have any articles but I also don't have CNA's in OB/L&D or nursery at my hospital. When I worked peds we had 1 that was also the secretary but they always got pulled to the med/surg floors because they couldn't keep them. They do have a place and I appreciated them when I had them. Total care does give you the chance to get to know your patient better and do that total head to toe when you do your own baths and know the meds when you do those too. Hopefully when they take your CNAs they lighten the pt load also.

[hsieh]

in our area cardiac patients are taken care of by RN not CNA.

[Mary77]

Just wondering if you know what your patient-nurse ratio will be when they do away with the CNA's. Personally I don't like the idea that much...I also thought that hospitals are hiring more CNA's so they could pay them less per hour instead of paying the higher wage for the RN for the same job (basic patient care).

[sylvie]

I work in the ACU (med-surg),which also houses tele monitoring. We have 21 beds, mostly seeing approx 18-20 patients at one time. the nurse to patient ratio on the night shift that I work is 5-6 to one nurse. on days it is approx 4-5 pt to one nurse. The only problem I currently see is that we are short on nurses to begin with ( I get called in to work extra shifts constantly). I dont see how they will be able to hire extra nurses when they cannot even hire nurses and keep them on staff enough as it is. What I see happening is no more CNAs, not enough nurses, so we will be stuck with the same amount of patients without the help.