"The Danger Of Becoming a Black Male Nurse Assistant"
Copyright © 2008 by J.A.Mcbean. Library of Congress Washington.D.C.20559
A certified Nurse Assistant is a valuable person in the health field; because they are in direct contact with the patients, and sometime are the first to see an emerging problem. He/she is not caught up with to much book works like the Nurses so they have more time to look for bedsores and other emerging problems. However, a Nurse Assistant job is a bad choice of work for black men, and I will tell you why, but before I tell you why, please read on.
A REWARD ABLE FIELD.
You meet good people, sometime you are taking care of the grandmother and grandfather of some dignitary and do not know it.
First, I must tell you about my self. I am an ordain minister of religions. How I got into the Nurse Assistant field of work. I was a Diesel Mechanic. I had three children coming into collage age. I decide to go and do the Nurse Assistant course. Because, between Friday night and Sunday 3-11 a make some really good money, and I still have time to go to my Mechanic job come Monday morning. The CNA job was a good back up job. There was plenty of it all over the place; some places even have sign on bonus, ranging from $500 to $900. On my lost job as a Nurse assistant, I get $900 sign on bonus
On moving to Florida I got fired from my mechanic job, I attracted the hate of homosexuals, give my biblical views of the subjects and by doing so I stepped on the wrong toes. They came up with trump up charges to fire me.
While working from one nursing home to the other, being sent by agency. I quickly discovered that patients do not like black male Nurse Assistants. Some patients told me they feel the same way about black men just like in the sixties. One patient said “What did we do wrong, why did we teach these Negroes to read? This was not the behavior of all patient but a few. There goes your whole day, that comment just knocks the wind out of the sail of every black male Nurse assistant on board.
A NEW KIND OF PROBLEM.
Family of patients do not like black male Nurse assistant, female patients do not like black male Nurse Assistants. Some nurses do not respect male Nurse Assistant. Male Nurse Assistants are needed on the job, more than any other job. Sometime if a male Nurse assistant was not on duty, a combative patient could make a lot of damage. One night it takes about four male Nurse Assistant to take one mad patients of the belly of a nurse. She was so traumatize, the lost time I saw her she was working in a convenient store. ( Note!! I did not say what hospital or nursing homes I got my experience)
STRESSFUL JOB SITUATIONS IS THE NUMBER ONE KILLER OF PEOPLE.
You spent more time on the job than in your house, why should you be working unhappy. What kind of service can you deliver to your patients being unhappy? Anger, hate, grudges and constant harassment put tremendous pressure upon your adrenal glands, to deliver it hormone to calm you down, in time it has nothing more to give and you fall over dead. Being in any situations such as job, where bad looks, and people defaming you and people pretending to be afraid of you are constantly bombarding you. This is not a good position to be in as a person. God did not make you for this, this is not the will of God for you even if it seems to put food on your table for a while. How can you be in an unhealthy emotional surrounding and be emotionally healthy yourself?
3 John 1:2 (NASB-U) Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers.
“The adrenal glands lie on top of the kidneys. They are very important in helping the body adapt to stress conditions by stimulating the autonomic nervous system.”
Being a Nursing Assistant. By Rose B. Schliemann, R.n, B.S.N. M.s.Ed. C.N.A. Publisher Brady. A prentice hall division, Englewood Cliffts, New Jersey 07632. 1991.
The complete book Vitamins and Minerals for health. By Lewis Vaughn. Publisher, Rodale Press, Emmaus, Pennsylvania. 1988. Page 279.
Stressful Lifestyle. “ Emotional stress can also rise the body’s adrenaline levels and increase the likelihood of arrhythmias. The same high-stress life agenda that gives heart attacks to driven executives often gives them arrhythmias as well. Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health say that “psychological stress profoundly lowers the cardiac threshold for ventricular fibrillation”- the arrhythmia that cause sudden death. Almost any kind of stress seems to do. Studies with animals have shown that such things as offering and denying food and mild physical restrain in unfamiliar surroundings may cause arrhythmia. In humans, feelings of abandonment, depression, alienation, and even violent dreams are thought to cause arrhythmia.
“Acute anger, researchers think, disrupts heart rhythms the most. Anger release body chemicals that may constrict the arteries that supply the heart itself with blood”
“Arrhythmia” Means, An irregularity in the force or rhythm of the heartbeat.
WALKING INTO A SET UP.
If a female patient does not like you, she could say you touch her in appropriately. It has to be investigated; you have to be suspended pending investigation. If somebody does not like you for some reason, the investigation could take a long time, after one year, win or loose you will need to be retrain. You have to clean people and take off their panties, when in doubt, take a female CNA along with you. As a male CNA, you are one-step between going to jail and losing your license. Your reputation could end up in the trashcan any time for any reason. On my lost job as a cna, if the toilet plugged up in the night I was call, since I was the only male cna on duty in the night. If an heavy patient is there, I am called in to help, at the same time do my regular work, if a female nurse feel horned in the night, you the male is blamed for it, if pms started, you are blamed for it, if her husband beat the crop out of her before she came to work, an arrival to do her shift, all her home problem is brought to the job and dump on you.
PUTTING YOUR HEALTH IN DANGER.
You will not be told when a patient had respiratory disease, or communicable disease. If you do not take a peep in the chart, which is not for the Nurse Assistant to do, you will never know what you are up against. Do not count on being told. Nurse Assistant is a only mudguard for the nurses, somebody to take the blame when things go wrong. Another problem, the patient in that bed does not necessarily live on that wing. Patient wonders from wing to wing. Mistakes are easily made in a nursing home. Any time something is wrong they go looking for a black man among them to take the blame. The people in the room drop a patient, they escape from the room and is calling one of us black to go into the room.
Patients with Alzheimer’s disease who get beat up twenty years ago accuses somebody today of slapping them, any Negro will do. There goes your black skin, who going to believe you that you did not do it? All I am trying to say, you must do your research before you jump headlong into a field of work, only because the training is two weeks. In my days, it was six months.
SINCE YOU DO NOT KNOW LET ME TELL YOU.
Society is programmed to believe every nasty things that they heard about a black man. If you choose to go into the medical field shoot for the top. Go for doctor or other skills within the medical field, but when you take up a dime a dozen profession like Nurse Assistant you are only sharpening up the raven beak to pick out your eyes. When you quit or get fired, you have hard times getting another job, because they refuses to give out reference. One RN fill out twenty eight applications, finally when she filled out the twenty ninth applications this company told her that they are going to give her an chance and hire her regardless of what her previous job told them about her.
Four of us Nurse Assistant must be on duty, if one called out the three has to do the job, then get up people in the morning. Before I reach home, I pass out in the car. You the male nurse assistant will be called upon to do all the female work that they cannot do while doing you work at the same time. If you are a black male Nurse assistant, you have no back up, no one to help you. Sometime you will be called to help a nurse do a “straight cat” on a patient, that patient is going to tell her family that a black man was in the room holding her down putting something into her vagina. That nurse not going to vote for you, they went into hiding because they do not want to get mix up in an accusation like that, and coming out to help a black man could give her a bad self-image.
There is an old Jamaican proverbs that say “cockroaches must not get involve in chicken fight” The cockroaches are the ones that are going to get eaten up. As a black man, you have your skin color working against you, if you are Christians you might have that working against you. Some people do not like born again Christians. If you are an Islander mainly Jamaican, you have that working against you also. You are a prime target for every thing bad that happens in that nursing home. Several time I was called in the office when the crime was read to me, that I suppose to have commit, I was not at work that day, when such a crime was committed. If they give me a dime for every apologies, my pocket would have been full of dimes. Becoming a black male nurse assistant, the laugh will be on you. If you are going to take care of men, only it could be ok. However, washing up under those old miserable women, you will find yourself laughing after yourself.
ONE STEP BETWEEN GOINGS TO JAIL AND LOSING YOUR LICENSE.
Morning shift people!!! Good lord God in heaven. I told one girl that any time I saw her come to work in a good mood I will give her $20; she never did win that $20. If you are a kind of person that has clashes with women, the CNA job is not for you as a man. Nursing was originally a women's predominate job. It was a woman name Florence, who first starts nursing. she took care of wounded solders, she was call "The lady with the lamp"
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT.
People in the health field should do diversity training as a must. People in the health field should do stress handling course as a must. Your home problem and race problem should be left in your cars before you enter the facilities.
ASSIGNMENT COULD BE FIX SO A MALE CNA ONLY GET CERTAIN PEOPLE.
However, you know what! People do not care, one of the word I heard the most in the health field is “I do not care, I am just here to make my pay check” I have to wonder what the hell such a person is doing in the health field if you do not care.
GETTING UP FOUR PEOPLE.
In most nursing homes, the 11 to 7 shift is required to get up four people before they leave for home each morning. If the patient is going to dialysis that is quite justified. However, a patient who is not leaving and to get them up out of bed just to fall asleep in that chair is ludicrous. However, they do it still because they think the 11-7 cna has nothing to do all night. However, night is the time when all hell let loose, sleep walkers, pissers, patient climbing in other patients bed. CNA went to take them out of other people bed and they put foot in face. “Do you want foot in face? No! Well get out”
A REWARDABLE FIELD.
A rewardable field of work but not for black men. Do not let any ghost deceive you. If you value you skin stay out. Go learn other trade. One of the biggest problem in that field of work, if you try to leave, your reference will never be given to prospective employers, or they will find away to say bad things about you.
Learn a skill that are in demand, and one that you can work on your own if you cannot find employment in the job market. You cannot set up a nursing home at your house, but you can set up a TV repair shop, or a tailor shop, even a car repairing work in your back yard until your nosey neighbors complains.
When you find ten women in that field of work, you find one man. If those women do not like that man, in ten minutes all of them became friends and send you to hell.
On one of my job, the girls put wet towel under one of my patients draw sheet. To make it look like the patients was neglect. They did me that for some four years, until I finally, caught them red handed.
One patient told a friend of mind that he wanted to punch a nigger one more time before he died. My friend turn his face to him and as say “ Ok, hit me” The patient land him one big punch to the face and died a few hours later.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF AS A CNA.
If you want to live today, you must think about tomorrow, think about your personal file.
Do not pick a fight with other workers or patient. Do not challenge the authority on the job. Watch out and be careful of lead CNA want to be. Lead CNA want to be making a lot of damage, they look for people who have quality that will enable you to get that positions and find a way to slay your chances, by getting the nurses to hate you.
DEALING WITH COMBATIVE PATIENT.
If a patient is COMBATIVE and on the defensive or offensive, fake a cry and get out. Get somebody else in that room with you. Here in Florida I see family members bring the family to nursing home just provoke a law suite. Sowing Nursing Home is big business here. I caught family member standing on chair while pulling the ceiling, Always think that there is a camera in the room. Never block a punch coming from a patient; move quickly; because the patient that has fragile skin will get cut just by you blocking that slap. Tell it to the police that you did not chop that patient with something and see who believe you.
SEX ON THE JOB.
put your self under control.
Every now and then, you will come across a Harney son of a gun, or daughter of a gun, who want to get their cherry pick. When you refuse it, they will go and lied on you that you were trying to get some. Do not start relationship with patient, if you like her that much, waits until she get better and went home.
Any time the word “sex” came up you as a man you must walk away. Do not laugh; do not take part in the conversations, just walk away. Never start a relationship on the job, because when the relationship became like stink milk it will be your backside that will be going down in the gutter. Every joke that you give is going to come back and bite you eight months later. The one that is not getting your attention is the one that will sink you, and complain about you.
The survival of the fittest does not depend on luck, but on calculated actions.
When you leave school it is best to go to a big company and look a job, because these little agency that came up over night, sometime refuses to give out your references, are give you a bad references to keep you from leaving, they are good for that.
DEALING WITH PROVOCATIVES.
put your anger under control, or you will not worth a penny.
This person know how to start conflicts, and in most cases get away with it, because he she is already liked are those in authority is afraid of such.
One of my good co-workers gets into and argument with PROVOCATIVES, I beg her to quit the argument and walk away. Because she is a woman, I did not want to physically pull her away. She was too angry to listen. The next day she was fired. Never let your anger lost more than minuets. If you have to get physical wait until you catch the person at the shopping mall, because troublemaker never remain in their homes, and they do not watch their backs for all the trouble they make.
Just remember. "To added afflictions Christ added his mercy"
Come back for update soon.
Bearer Of The Mind Sword.
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