Duties of a Certified Nursing Assistant in Nursing Homes

As with most CNA jobs, the duties a Certified Nursing Assistant performs can be numerous. Becoming a CNA will give you the opportunity to help and assist people in a most basic, but profoundly helpful way, every single day. Certified Nursing Assistants that work in nursing homes normally help people who are elderly and/or bedridden to maintain a daily routine in their life. Being employed as a certified nurse requires a good deal of commitment and willingness to provide patients with a high level of care who otherwise could not perform these tasks on their own.

Certified Nursing Assistants are in essence, the people who ensure that residents of nursing homes are cared for properly in the most basic but essential ways. Responsibilities that a CNA has are things like ensuring residents are clean (bathing or helping them bathe), and insuring that they are completely dry so that skin irritations and problems do not arise. Other CNA duties consist of things like brushing teeth, maintaining a patients hair (brushing and cleaning) and also many other basic hygeine tasks you would do for yourself, but for the patients you are caring for who are unable to do these things for themselves.

In addition to this, some patients in nursing homes may require to be fed by certified nursing assistants, specially so if they have suffered a stroke or other illness that impairs their motor skills. As such, having a Certified Nursing Assistant to care for them  is essential to them maintaining a high standard of living each and every day.

Certified Nursing Assistants also provide nursing home residents with help in maintaining their flexibility and mobility. CNA’s are trained to use and provide Range Of Motion exercises on residents, which are used to help keep joints, limbs and muscles flexible.

In addition to all these duties, CNA’s must always maintain a high level of personal interaction with residents or patients. CNA’s have a role of being a patients companion and friend as part of their job description. Many residents in nursing homes can be lonely and have very few, if any, family or friends to visit them. This can lead to depression, which can in turn spark other illness’s and conditions, so the emotional support CNA’s give is a vital part of their job, as the patients may not receive this from anywhere else.

Being a CNA comprises of medical, physical and emotional support, and all 3 are just as important as each other.