Certified Nurse Assistant Turns Caring Into A Career
How much does Laytania Griffin love her career as a certified nurse assistant? So much that she’s convinced several family members and friends to become CNAs, too.
“I just love what I do,” she said. “And it’s just a nice field to go into.”
Griffin says being a CNA in skilled nursing facilities is an excellent choice for someone who enjoys the medical field but who wants to spend more time and develop a closer relationship with patients than most hospital-based nurses.
Griffin is beginning her 25th year as a CNA and her 14th year working at Barnes-Jewish Extended Care, a 120-bed skilled nursing and long-term rehabilitation facility in Clayton, Mo. During that time, Griffin ’s love for her job has only grown.
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Griffin wasn’t always so enthusiastic. Several of her family members were in health care, and her mother was a licensed practical nurse. Yet, when she was age 19, Griffin felt she wasn’t ready to pursue a college degree.
“My mother told me I could be a nurse,” Griffin said. “I knew I could do it. I just wasn’t crazy about going to school.”
Griffin took her mother’s advice to go into health care. However, instead of nursing school, she took a shorter course at Vatterott-Sullivan Technical School (now Vatterott College ) to become a nurse assistant.
After graduating, Griffin received her state certification, which includes both written and oral exams and observation by a state inspector while performing duties, such as taking vital signs and bathing patients. Griffin then accepted her first job at a long-term nursing facility for the elderly.
“I was so nervous,” she said. “I just told myself I was just trying something out for a while.”
Griffin soon found her work had turned into something more than just a job.
Working as a CNA combines clinical elements with a high level of hands-on care. CNAs monitor their patients’ physical health and vital signs and assist with tasks ranging from dressing and feeding to personal hygiene. A good CNA, Griffin said, not only cares for patients’ physical needs but also assesses patients’ overall well-being, comfort level and mental status and works to maximize those.
In an extended care facility, CNAs can be an active part of a team approach to residents’ individualized care. Residents range from young persons to seniors, and include long-term residents, short-term post-trauma rehabilitation patients and those needing hospice or respite care. The care team includes physicians, nurses, CNAs, therapists, administration, social workers and the patients’ families.
“The whole patient care floor works as a team,” Griffin said. “We all need each other. It’s really hard to work in a facility unless you are a team.”
One thing Griffin brings to her team is a caring philosophy.
“I treat residents like they were a member of my family,” she said. “You get to know your residents. I know when they’re feeling uncomfortable or sad. You really have to observe the details.”
Flexibility, empathy and a sense of humor are important, too. For instance, residents affected by a stroke, trauma or dementia may not remember their caretakers from day to day, so Griffin makes sure to introduce or reintroduce herself to all of her patients at the beginning of each shift.
“I’ll tell them my name is Laytania,” she said. “Some will say, ‘Your name is Lasagne?’ I'll tell them, ‘Whatever works!’ So, they’ll call me that all day.
“It’s your job to make them feel at home,” Griffin says. “You have to remember that a lot of these people don’t want to be here.”
Throughout the years, Griffin has gained experience as a CNA that she knows will help her in nursing school because she plans to become a nurse some day.
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