Advice for pre-nursing student

Get experience in healthcare - preferably in the area you would like to work. You want to work in OB? That's great, but it is usually really tough to get a job in a hospital with no experience - let alone in OB.

So get a job as a CNA anywhere you can (nursing home) and start applying for any hospital job you can as soon as you get a couple months experience.

Good luck!

You should get into another line of work. There are very few jobs for nurses these days. I wish you all the best.

Yes, you basically need to get a CNA/nurse tech/extern job while you're in nursing school in order to get a decent nursing job once you graduate. A lot of schools will tell you not to work while you're in school. Don't believe them. You can and you should.

Yes, you can work as a CNA while still in school- in fact I would encourage any nursing student to work as an aide before becoming a nurse, the experience is invaluable. Another thing you could do is volunteer at a hospital; see if they have any OB positions if that's what you're interested in. Good luck

Yes you can and should work as a CNA while you are in school. That's what I am doing right now. I work as a nurse's aide in a large metro hospital level one trauma center plus I am just finishing the second semester of nursing school for RN. It really does help, especially with clinicals - familiarity with hospital and hospital work in particular. Myself I don't really have a choice anyway - I have bills and rent to pay so I have to work. I figure it might as well be in what I am studying for.

Definitley work as a CNA while you are in nursing school... 1. you will learn much much more. 2. when you graduate you can work for the same facility you are already working in. I have 3 children, work full time and go to school full time... YES you can work and go to school.

I absolutely agree. Many of my classmates were counseled to not work during school and to just focus 100% on school. Many of those same students are now finding it near impossible to land an interview, let alone a job. A very high percentage of students who have been working as techs/CNAs already have jobs secured before graduation. With an overabundance of new grads, hospitals now have the luxury of demanding prior healthcare experience as a minimum requirement to even get an interview. If a student is within 1 year of graduating and still doesn't have a tech job, I would go so far as to counsel them to take a semester or two off of school just to focus on landing a tech job so they graduate with experience.