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https://portfolium.com/entry/social-discrimination-and-cnas

Certified Nursing Assistants are usually have the least amount of power and the most laborious work of any healthcare facility worker. According to Marylee Heath, a nurse from Columbus Ohio with 49 years of experience, Certified Nursing Assistants, or CNAs, usually are assigned the most laborious and undesirable tasks including picking up patients, cleaning up human waste, washing patients, etc. (Heath). CNAs are severely underpaid and work in poor working conditions, which leads to CNAs leaving the position at a high rate. Due to the perception that CNAs are expendable, they face social discrimination in the workplace, especially surrounding identities of race, ethnicity, first language, and class. (Teitelman et al, 4-7). Certified Nursing Assistants face discrimination due to their class, national origin, and race in the workplace which creates a cycle of poverty that perpetuates low morality, continued impoverishment, and a limited room for advancement.

Certified Nursing Assistants are paid poorly because they do not have qualifications to have higher roles in healthcare, usually due to factors out of their control like being born in poverty, being educated in a country which the United States does not accept their qualifications, etc. These factors create a power dynamic within the healthcare facility in which CNAs are asked to do the undesirable work, face implicit and explicit bias, racism, sexism, and xenophobia. This creates a low moral which leads to a high rate of turnover for the CNA position. (Heath; Kusmaul & Waldrop, 5.1-5.5). Some people believe that being a Certified Nursing Assistant is an entry position however with all the factors listed above it is very hard if you are a minoritized person in society. My mother is a white woman, and although she comes from a low socio-economic background, she had the support of her parents to help her while she was a nursing aide. Many CNAs that hold minoritized identities do not have this privilege and leave the healthcare field before they can advance their career.

`Certified Nursing Assistants, according to PayScale.com, get payed $12.49 an hour which is far below the livable wage in the United States which is $16.54. (PayScale, Nadeau). This creates a cycle of poverty as it is usually impoverished or the unemployed who take these jobs with little education requirements and low wages. While Khatutsky and Wiener argue that immigrants are payed an average of a dollar an hour more than non-immigrant CNAs and they report a high rate of satisfaction with their work, even if that wage is far below the livable wage. However, these wages are confounded with social identity. (Khatutsky and Wiener, 288). Immigrants are more likely to be subjected to discrimination which is found by that same study. This discrepancy can be equated to immigrants leaving their countries for a better life and appreciating the opportunity of a job, even at the expense of being discriminated against.

According to Marylee Heath, a nurse from Columbus Ohio with 49 years of experience, Certified Nursing Assistants, or CNAs, usually are assigned the most laborious and undesirable tasks including picking up patients, cleaning up human waste, washing patients, etc. (Heath). CNAs are severely underpaid and work in poor working conditions, which leads to CNAs leaving the position at a high rate. Due to the perception that CNAs are expendable, poor working conditions do not improve and the cycle is perpetuated. However, there is an argument that CNAs are paid poorly and asked to do undesirable work because they are less likely to be educated to do other jobs within the medical facility. While education for a person to become a CNA is minimum (usually a week to two week certification class), many people that are in the job market to be a CNA are not able to pursue a degree in medicine because of their socio-economic situation.

Certified Nursing Assistants are paid poorly and perform very laborious tasks which leads to a false belief that CNAs are less important than other positions. This power structure allows discrimination to take place in the workplace leading to low morale. All these factors combined lead to a high turnover of the position and continued poverty for CNAs and the cycle continues. To end this cycle, wages must raise, benefits must be provided, and there must be opportunities for pursuing an education.

• Certified Nursing Assistants face discrimination due to their class, national origin, and race in the workplace which creates a cycle of poverty that perpetuates low morality, continued impoverishment, and a limited room for advancement.
• Social discrimination that Certified Nursing Assistants face in the workplace creates limited room for advancement of a career, which continues the cycle of poverty.
  • Certified Nursing Assitant is an entry position which people can enter the healthcare field and work towards a career.
• Certified Nursing Assistants are paid very poorly for the undesirable work that they do which contributes to the cycle of poverty that Certified Nursing Assistants face.
  • A minoritized group, immigrants, are found to have a high rate of happiness even though they make a wage lower than the livable wage
• Certified Nursing Assistants have the least amount of power and the most labourous work of any healthcare facility worker leading to high rates of burnout.
  • CNAs are paid poorly and asked to do undesirable work because they are less likely to be educated to do other jobs within the medical facility.
• Certified Nursing Assistants are paid poorly and perform very laborious tasks which leads to a false belief that CNAs are less important than other positions. This power structure allows discrimination to take place in the workplace leading to low morale. All these factors combined lead to a high turnover of the position and continued poverty for CNAs and the cycle continues. To end this cycle, wages must raise, benefits must be provided, and their must be oppertunities for pursuing an education.

Social discrimination that Certified Nursing Assistants face in the workplace creates limited room for advancement of a career, which continues the cycle of poverty.

Certified Nursing Assistants are payed poorly because they do not have qualifications to have higher roles in healthcare, usually due to factors out of their control like being born in poverty, being educated in a country which the United States does not accept their qualifications, etc. These factors create a power dynamic within the healthcare facility in which CNAs are asked to do the undesirable work, face implict and explict bias, racism, sexism, and xenophobia. This creates a low moral which leads to a high rate of turnover for the CNA position. (Heath; Kusmaul & Waldrop, 5.1-5.5). Some people believe that being a Certified Nursing Assitant is an entry position however with all the factors listed above it is very hard if you are a minoritized person in society. My mother is a white woman, and although she comes from a low socio-economic background, she had the support of her parents to help her while she was a nursing aide. Many CNAs that hold minoritized identities do not have this privlege and leave the healthcare field before they can advance their career.

Certified Nursing Assistants are payed very poorly for the undesirable work that they do which contributes to the cycle of poverty that Certified Nursing Assistants face.

Certified Nursing Assistants, according to PayScale.com, get payed $12.49 an hour which is far below the livable wage in the United States which is $16.54. (PayScale, Nadeau). This creates a cycle of poverty as it is usually impoverished or the unemployed who take these jobs with little education requirements and low wages. While Khatutsky and Wiener argue that immigrants are payed an average of a dollar an hour more than non-immigrant CNAs and they report a high rate of satisfaction with their work, even if that wage is far below the livable wage. However, these wages are confounded with social identity. (Khatutsky and Wiener, 288). Immigrants are more likely to be subjected to discrimination which is found by that same study. This discrepancy can be equated to immigrants leaving their countries for a better life and appriciating the oppertunity of a job, even at the expense of being discriminated against.

Certified Nursing Assistants have the least amount of power and the most labourous work of any healthcare facility worker leading to high rates of burnout.

According to Marylee Heath, a nurse from Columbus Ohio with 49 years of experience, Certified Nursing Assistants, or CNAs, usually are assigned the most labourous and undesirable tasks including picking up patients, cleaning up human waste, washing patients, etc. (Heath).CNAs are severly underpayed and work in poor working conditions, which leads to CNAs leaving the position at a high rate. Due to the perception that CNAs are expendible, poor working conditions do not improve and the cycle is perpetuated.

Heath, M. (2021, April 5). Personal communication [Phone call].

My source covered her experiences as a nurse’s aide (pre-CNA) and LPN in 49 years of nursing experience. My source has worked as, with, and supervised CNAs for 49 years. I chose this source because she has personal experience and knowledge of the discrimination that CNAs face. My source has years of experience but the majority of her anwsers came from experience within the last 10 years to keep relevant. The source is my mother so it did not come from a database and I called her phone number to interview her.

Kusmaul, N., & Waldrop, D. P. (2015). Certified Nursing Assistants as Frontline Caregivers in Nursing Homes: Does Trauma Influence Caregiving Abilities? Traumatology, 21(3), 251–258.

This source covers the exposure to trauma that Cerified Nursing Assistants are most likely to be exposed to while giving direct care and how this could impact work performance. Kusmaul recieved her PhD in Social Work from the University at Buffalo and Waldrop recieved her PhD in Human Environmental Science and Family Relations from Oklahoma State University. I chose this source because it gives a different perspective of discrimination than we usually talk about: how it impacts a person individually. That study of individual impact to work performance strengthens my argument. This source was published in 2015 so it is still relevant to my research. I found this source through Ohio State’s Library WorldCat search on Ebscohost’s data base.

Khatutsky, G., Wiener, J., & Anderson, W. (2010). Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Certified Nursing Assistants in Nursing Homes: How Do They Differ? Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 22(3), 267–287.

This source a comparative study of the experiences of Immigrant Certified Nursing Assistants and Non-Immigrant Certified Nursing Assistants including working conditions, benefits, and discrimination. One of the three authors is a fellow and the other two are health analysts at RTI International, which is a research organization. I chose this source because it offers a unique perspective on the discrimination that Certified Nursing Assistants face. These authors claim that although” immigrant CNAs are older, better educated, and somewhat more highly paid than their non-immigrant counterparts … [they] also experience substantial levels of discrimination and language-related communication barriers at work”, which complicates my argument. This was published in 2015 so it is still relevant. I found this source throught the WorldCat search on OSU’s library website on Ebscohost’s database.

Gunderson’s presentation taught me that copyright isn’t supposed to be restrictive to research but instead freeing to researchers. Before Gunderson’s presentation, I always thought that copyright is a “hands-off” signal to researchers to not use this source without correct citation. However, with or without realizing it, we break copyright laws all the time. One thing I thought that was interesting about Gunderson’s work is that he stretched the limits of copyright laws, and I realized that this is something that we can do in our research to access more information and pass along that information to the public. This presentation really challenged my thinking when it comes to research and complicated my idea of what role copyright serves in research.