Why CNA's Should Rule the World

I spent three days [nonconsecutive--I called in one day "sick", i.e. close to a nervous breakdown] in the summer of 1976 in Seattle trying to be a nursing assistant. I don't think there was any certification then. The training was this: go buy a white uniform and white shoes and show up at 6 AM. So I take the early bus out to this outfit [it was on north 125th somewhere] so nervous and so unused to the early hour I'm about to throw up, and they send us out on the floor to shove oatmeal into one end and clean up the other, for these poor old souls complaining, "I don't want to get up!" Me neither, sister. I spent the whole time in a state of confusion.

The hallways were filled with old people in hospital gowns and poor grooming tied into wheelchairs by Posey vest restraints, hollering. Someone asked to be helped to the bathroom and I had no idea how to transfer her. I helped the nurses position someone as they treated a bedsore you could have fit a pear into, a sight my young eyes were not ready for. When I wasn't sure what to do next I sat down, and got yelled at for sitting. My uniform pants rubbed tender areas and my shoes were not broken in. For lunch I sat out on the loading dock, as I couldn't breathe in the break room.

I think what really filled me with a sense of futility was yanking everyone out of bed in the morning, taking them to breakfast, then laying them down; then up again for lunch, then down again . . . It seemed uselessly regimented, and a meaningless existence.

Now here I am in health care again. A lot of things have changed, and for those that haven't, I understand the rationale. But I will always have enormous respect for nursing assistants. We can't do the job without them. We just can't.