CNA class

Yesterday was my first day of the certified nurse assistant training class. It was interesting to see the spectrum of people there. There were a smattering of high schoolers, a few in their 30's, a handful around my age, and one woman who was over 60- not to mention, only one male student. My section is in Rantoul, which might account for the differences in age since the rest of the classes are at Parkland and they probably have more people in their 20's. Anyway, it's interesting so far. Yesterday, we checked off two of our 21 skills that we have to get tested on to pass the class- hand washing and putting on and taking off a mask, gown and gloves for an isolation room patient. The hand washing was obviously easy but the second task was more difficult, not for the physical tast but we have "beginning" and "finishing" tasks for each major task and we have to tell the instructor what those are: washing hands, knocking, introduction of self, making sure you have the right person, setting up equipment, asking visitors to leave, explaining the procedure, adjusting the patient back to a comfortable position, making sure their water and call button are within reach, adjusting the bed, checking for general safety (making sure the bed brake is on), inviting the visitors back in. phew, that's a long list. I'm sure by task 21 it'll just roll off my tongue but i struggled to remember a few of them. Not to mention when i was trying to take off my gown, the waist tie got knotted pretty bad and the instructor had to help me. But she said normally they don't untie them but they rip them off instead. Since we're reusing the gowns for the class, we had to be nice to them so I didn't get docked points for that. We'll see how the rest of these classes go- I'm off to my second day!