I just started a CNA course

Please pray for me as I have begun a CNA course. Please pray for me to become more and more comfortable driving to and from the school. Pray that I would apply myself and study hard and do well. Thank you

You have picked something to do that there is great need in.

I went to nursing school, the first 3 semesters. After the first semester, you can become a CnA. I almost did after I found nursing wasn't for me. Our first semesters clinicals were in a nursing home and we were worked with the CNA's. There are a lot of problems and burned out people. They do what they must - bathing, changing beds, etc., But don't have a lot left over for the patients in terms of getting to know them and examining what they can try to do to alleviate their miseries and loneliness.

It was like...a job to most of them, but there was no passion. Part of it is their patient load. Sometimes 8 patients. That's 8 meals, 8 showers, 8 bed changes, 8 people to dress, 8 people to either wheel to dinner or help to feed in bed, 8 people to keep track of and report any issues on, like bedsores or change in behavior. Of course, the person you are reporting to is an RN, who sometimes has an 80 patient workload and honestly, her job is administration of meds, so you often won t find a lot of help there unless it's a screaming emergency, so you have to get creative sometimes.I

But of all the clinicals, the nursing home was the one that was both most heartbreaking and most rewarding. Instead of new patients everyday, you get to know them. You get to do things like ask a young woman who was in a lifedestroying car wreck what she most would like to eat that she hasn't had in the 6 years she has been there and then you get to bring her a piece of pizza from Luigi's, her favorite, and help her eat it while she closes her eyes and keeps saying, mmmm and thanking you.

And you get to figure out what small things (such small things!) remove peace and give peace for each patient if you take the time others say there is no time for to observe and care amid your weariness. When everyone sees you give a patient a shower by yourself who has always fought and screamed and needed 3 people for a shower, and you tell them, oh, she calms right down if you ask her about the time she met Frank Sinatra, it's rewarding, because you know that on your off days she won't have any more terrifying showers with 3 people holding her down because you brought her freedom from that.

There are some heartbreaking aspects to the work. I only saw one family member ever visit a patient in the entire semester. They are dropped off and forgotten a lot of the time. But when they do visit, you avidly listen and ask questions to learn what more you can about them and what they used to like, to hopefully give them more comfort.

You have chosen a job that desperately needs more christia n workers.