night at nursing home -- LiveWire College Forums

I'm trying to get my CNA. I have about two weeks left before the state exam. Last night I wore my blue scrubs and went to the nursing home for clinicals. I was there for eight hours (with no break). First, I had to give a paralyzed guy a bath. He hadn't bathed in four days so he smelled TERRIBLE. LIKE BUTT. Because he was paralyzed he couldn't help himself obviously so me and another girl helped him use a mechanical lift to help him into the shower. The lift had a lot of straps and was very difficult to use. It was complicated. And we had to wash everything for him including his private parts because he was paralyzed and couldn't do it. He just fell asleep though because he was used to it and besides, he couldn't feel anything. Pretty gross but glad to be of help. AND HORROR OF ALL HORRORS! He had a colostomy bag and a catheter running through a tube in his stomach which had blood around the hole where it had rubbed. in the shower we had to be careful to wash around his colostomy bag as well as his catheter, attatched to cords in his stomach. the catheter was yellow, filled with urine. it smelled awful. and horror of all horrors, when we changed his depends we found deep scars from his various spinal operations, raised scars the size of a fishbone all over his back, and huge, deep bedsores which we reported to the nure. I could not believe that the hopital was run by KIDS including myself, but no one running that wing of the center that night was over the age of 22! The nurse, a recently graduated RN was barely 22 years old and she was in charge. Everyone else was either a teenager or in their very early twenties. A whole hospital wing run by kids.
Next I had to help the nurse bandage bed sores on patients. One old man had a wound so deep it had gotten to his muscle. The wound was about 2 inches in diameter and an inch and a half deep. All the way to the muscle. There was dead tissue all around it, yellow and green stinking rot. The nurse asked me to hand her scissors and bandages. I could not believe that she stuffed three rolled up gauze, three rolled up ones inside that wound...I mean, my job is so gross but someone's got to do it?

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