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Naomi [userpic]

NaNo Fail

November 5th, 2009 (12:04 am)

I wrote/salvaged a whopping 198 words today.

The problem is that this is a work scene and I don't know what CNAs doooooooooo. Well, actually, after spending most of my productive time today googling and reading stuff about CNAs, I actually have at least some sense of it: they bring meals, they feed patients who can't feed themselves, they check blood glucose for diabetic patients, they bathe patients, they move patients to prevent bedsores, they help patients go to the bathroom if they need help and change diapers if they're incontinent, they change sheets, they act as general gofers for the nurses, and they respond to people's call bells, among other things. When I started actually trying to incorporate that info into the work scene, I hit a whole new layer of stuff I don't know. She's just arrived at work in the morning; does she have some back room where she can hang up her coat? Does she get to work right off delivering people's breakfasts or is there more to it than that? If a patient required bathing, how often would she be doing it? I want for her to have some times when she can chat with (or listen to) patients; what tasks could she plausibly be doing in those scenes? Presumably personal care stuff for people too sick/weak/shaky to do these things for themselves... If she's sitting and feeding a patient and some other patient rings their call bell, is she supposed to hop up and respond, or does someone else do it? Do CNAs get assigned to particular rooms or are they supposed to just jump for whichever nurse needs them to jump at any given moment? Etc., etc., etc.

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