Be a CNA!

Back in the day, they called the position "orderly". There were meal trays to pass, trash cans to keep empty, pre-operative shaves for male patients, and room lights to answer for the nurses. In the first full time job I had assumed after high school, I was an orderly in the county general hospital - thanks largely to my grandmother, on the nursing staff and one of my most powerful moral compasses. "Monie" knew I needed not just a job, but a job that challenged my emotional and social architecture. There had been a part-time stint of bagging groceries at the Kroger, but I was such an unfocused dweeb at that - also, my trig teacher had been a supervisor at the store, so GEEZ - what a blemish on my future if I had tried to stay! I couldn't not be successful at this hospital job, and at $1.65/hour - I had it all. Money in my pocket. Nurses and aides to keep me constantly moving and teach me things. Hostess fruit pies and Pepsi's for lunch! Any thought of my future career was at the time, only a nugget of light I didn't know I owned deep in my consciousness. Working as an orderly/CNA was a life pivot that, now, I wouldn't trade for all the stock options littering Wall Street.

On the one hand, why would you rhapsodize about a job where you were on the bottom of the hospital pecking order? An SLP is trained and conditioned to work with and communicate with doctors, nurses, psychologists, educators, parents, rad technologists and the like. You are entrusted to be in most settings, semi-autonomous and self-driven to manage your caseload and advocate for persons served. The orderly was instead, task- and criterion-driven to work down a checklist of responsibilities for a shift. Making beds with sharp hospital corners! Collecting meal trays for dietary staff!  Collecting, as an elderly Italian-American man once offered up, the "UREEN" for the lab! Yet, as I learned the job on a urology ward and later in the hospital's ER, then in a university hospital (ENT ward, general surgery clinic) and nursing home in Iowa - there was so much more.

With more and more work experience, I made the transition from completing non-medical to routine medical tasks. With knowledge I had accumulated about the medical conditions of persons served, I got the chance to assist nurses and doctors in frequent procedures. Catheter placements! Staple removal!! Nasogastric tube feeding!!! I learned to be vigilant for persons' needs - whether physical or emotional. I was pulled out of my shy dweeb shell, when forced to check in frequently with those persons assigned to me: as a result, I grew to know each person very well. I got to know the units on which these persons were housed very well, too. As a speech -language pathologist that will engage with these facilities, whether they are medical or long-term care, I respect the direct care staff and seek their advice for best care of the person served.

And so, WHY do I feel privileged to have been a CNA?  The skill set that grew out of those work experiences includes:

* physical effort in patient care, higher than that of most SLP's: hard physical work feels good!
* work processes of high frequency, that extend across diagnostic categories to meet criteria of a treatment plan: you can have a lot of pride in work that is repetitive and of low complexity.
* interpersonal communication experiences across ages, both genders and all socioeconomic tiers: when people are ill or convalescing, having someone to listen to them can spur healing. 
* being THE direct care staff who knows the person served very well, and serves as an advocate for them with the healthcare system: frequent attention to the person served only strengthens the therapeutic alliance.