I've worked as a nursing assistant at a hospital for 8 months on a neuro tele med/surg floor. I recentl was offered a position as a 'PCA' in ICU and accepted it. I'm going to school for nursing and I figured I could learn a lot from working down there, and I know that neuro isn't what I'm interested in as a nurse and wanted to see if maybe critical care would be more my cup of tea. Well as time goes on leading up to when I start (which is the beginning of January) I'm getting more and more nervous. I know that the pca's there do blood draws, ekg's, baths, help with turns, accuchecks, etc. But I've heard from others who have worked down there that it's crazy busy and that they work short staffed a lot and one coworker said he was pretty much dead every morning. (I work nights 7p-7a). I'm also nervous to work with critical people but it's something new so I'm sure once I got used to it I'd be okay.. I'm just really upset and discouraged that I've been hearing bad things about it. I was very excited for this job and now I'm thinking of resigning. I will have to work every other weekend & holiday and in my current position I work every 3rd weekend and holiday. I was willing to sacrifice because I thought I'd really love ICU, now I'm not so sure. I like my job now for the most part and my coworkers and I don't want to end up hating the unit. Should I resign or give critical care a shot? Thank you!

You will learn a lot if you want to learn. We have two secretaries in my unit, and one of them knows her rhythms and knows something about what drugs do what just based on talking to us, and we have another who is totally useless except for answering the phone. You will definitely learn if you are open to it.

To make your schedule work while you're going to school you're probably going to have to work a lot of weekends anyway. Nursing school is extremely variable and depending on the semester, you could have to be available any time of the day any week day. I didn't start having Saturday or Sunday night clinicals until I did my preceptorship right before I graduated, so those are usually pretty safe nights to work.

I don't see much of a downside here, unless you really don't want to work hard. Your post makes it sound a bit like hard work scares you, which I hope is not the case.

Going out of one's comfort zone can create some anxiety about the unknown, the ability to integrate into a team, ability to perform good work....

If you have not had an opportunity to shadow it can be hard to judge how much different the work would be from what you are doing now. For sure, the unit thinks you are capable otherwise they would not have offered you that job. Also, I think you would get some training for tasks you have not learned. ICU is just a different environment and there is an adjustment period in terms of learning curve. But in critical care, nurse staffing is usually ok (I have worked in pretty much any setting throughout my career).

Don't let other people scare you. Everybody is different in how they handle work and stress and what can be daunting and upsetting to one person may be just fine for you. I think you should take some time and explore what your fears are, your wishes (why you wanted this position)/hopes and how the choice would impact the rest of your life. You can use a grid to write everything down and perhaps that will help you to make a decision.

Why self-sabotage yourself out of a good job?

Take the job and decide for yourself. For a CNA, this is a good job.

You are a CNA; you will only have CNA responsibilities and the nurse will be right there.

If you have to work every other weekend, then if you have weekend differential, you will earn even more money.

This is a great opportunity to be involved in critical care without all the responsibility and liability it entails. I say go for it!

You've asked 10+ variations of this same question and still seem to have no clue about what you want. Maybe asking for other opinions so much is getting you more confused instead of helping you decide. Just flip a coin so you can move on with your life.