My Gained Respect for Health Care Workers

I recently became a State Tested Nurses Aid and after four years in phone sales i have really changed my train of thought for health care workers.
I did many things in phone sales, I was a fashion consultant, a trainer, supervisor, client services, and data entry. I thought tracking lost packages and dealing with angry people was hard i was wrong. In February I decided to get my feet wet in the health care Field my plan is to work as an stna then later receive my LPN.

With in my first month at the nursing home where i am currently employed i had to find out what worker comp was after i was beaten by one of the patients. I have watched several patients die and also several go home. If the mental stress isn't enough, let me explain my day.

First at seven O'Clock in the morning i Begin to pull 50 patients up in their beds. By 7:30a.m I am delivering breakfast trays to the patients, not only do i have to feed some of them I have open everything on all of the patients trays. At about 9:00 a.m i start my a.m. care on all the patients a.m care consists of showers, Peri care, changing depends, dressing,dental care, making the beds, lifting people ( some by lifts) to put them into their seating, all the while answering non stop call lights. I end up taking a quick 5 minute break around 10:30. 11:00 vital signs, transporting to lunch groups, passing and setting up of trays in dining room, feeding, back to my hall to pass the trays to the patients that didn't make it to the dining room.

By 1:00 I am putting patients back to bed checking and changing all patient depends. Vital signs again. My last few duties of the day are to take the trash out and do all chart work for all the patients.

Let me be the first to say i am sorry to have ever said that health care workers have it easy or are over paid. I was wrong if any thing they are underpaid. I do hard physical labor and emotional and mental stress for a mere $9.00 an Hour and i have a health care license. I will never look at a aid, nurse or even doctor and think that they have it easy. The health care field is in need of workers willing to put their self's to the test. Some ones got to do it because if no one ever dues there would be no one to care for those who cant care for them self's.