any of you work in a hospital without certification??

I have heard that hospitals wish to hire people who are certified CNAs, but will not pay the fee to recertify them; so, many of them do per diem at a nursing home (in New York, one has to work 7 hours in a long term care facility to be recertified-but the nursing home pays for it; the CNA cannot pay for recert the same as a nurse can pay to keep her license active).

But, many hospitals are hiring patient care technicians/associates, who have the additional skills of phlebotomy and EKG training.

Personally, it is truly disgusting to me that a CNA cannot pay to recertify themselves on their own. It keeps them dependent on nursing homes, while the CNAs at hospitals do much more many times, but may be limited to remain there unless they either retake the CNA exam if the cert runs out, or have to maintain a per diem position for the LTC to pay for them.

I recently found this out too and I was quite annoyed that we cannot re-cert ourselves. At this point, however, I'm not sure I want to go back to working in a nursing home and hope to be able to find employment this summer with just my Phleb and EKG certs.

Here in So Oregon they require a year worth of experience of a CNA to apply. We can recertify online though which is cool.