CNA rant....why did I become a CNA

Nursing Students CNA/MA

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CNA stands for Certified Nursing Assistant. When you hear the title you immediately think assist nurses and work besides nurses. You search career info on the web you will find a happy person in scrubs with a chart in there hand and stethoscope around there neck. It's truly misleading. It sucks people in. It sucked me in. I knew I wanted to be an LPN, but everyone told me that it's hard I wouldn't be able to handle the dirty work. Be a CNA first they said. And I regret every minute of not going straight to nursing school. CNA has put me a year behind and at a job I hate. The other day I was working with a 67 year old CNA. That tore it for me that was it. I enrolled in nursing school. I start May 24th. All CNAs do is take care of people that's it. And that means change diapers, dress nasty mean people, (some not all) every day every day it's the same thing. No respect no thank yous, you do this on 30 plus patients daily treated like crap, at my facility we are not even allowed to step foot behind the nurses station, I swear to you the Wardclerks and Dietary get 100 percent more respect than we do and they have no certifications. I am finally to the point wear I absolutely hate it. But I do think I will like being an LTC Nurse. And defininnlyy a nurse who understands frustration of my aides. But unless you think you can handle changing dirty diapers, bathing, feeding, 40 plus people a day do not become a CNA. Go straight for Nurse. Yes it's true that in some cases with the absence of CNAs nurses will have to do this. And I don't mind doing this, it's just I mind this being the only thing I do day after day for 40 plus years. All for about 900 dollars a month. Be aware Certified Nurses Assistant does not equal assisting nurses with there tasks, it equals personal care worker who does nothing but provide personal care to people. Be warned. Work is necessary but no one in there right mind wants to do it for more than 5-10 years. And it's only gonna get worse as facilities cut and fit and cut.

I truly think where and who you work with makes a huge difference. When I worked in the hospital as a CNA nurses helped way more than they do in LTC facilities. In LTC its like a nurse has no time to help you, where as in the hospital they will stop and help you if they can. But a nurses aid is a nurses aid. You are helping the nurse by changing a patient so they can pass meds or something else you can't do. It is a very tough and under paid job. I became a CNA in high school so I didn't waste time on those classes. I just got accepted into the RN program for fall 2013. It took me 5 years to do pre-reqs because I have 5 kids and work part time. So, while patients may not thank you, most are in pain, confused, etc. Trust me your nurses are very thankful even if they don't always say it. I love the nurses where I work, they always say thank you and appreciate what I do to help make their job easier :) Good luck.

I truly think where and who you work with makes a huge difference. When I worked in the hospital as a CNA nurses helped way more than they do in LTC facilities. In LTC its like a nurse has no time to help you where as in the hospital they will stop and help you if they can. But a nurses aid is a nurses aid. You are helping the nurse by changing a patient so they can pass meds or something else you can't do. It is a very tough and under paid job. I became a CNA in high school so I didn't waste time on those classes. I just got accepted into the RN program for fall 2013. It took me 5 years to do pre-reqs because I have 5 kids and work part time. So, while patients may not thank you, most are in pain, confused, etc. Trust me your nurses are very thankful even if they don't always say it. I love the nurses where I work, they always say thank you and appreciate what I do to help make their job easier :) Good luck.[/quote']

Amen I agree with you. I'm a cna in a nursing home when I first started most of the nurses were polite caring and helpful but many of them went to better jobs and were replaced with piece of work nurses, lazy with attitude and talk down to the cnas. They are low life miserable hags well I'm here to do my job and clock out no time for idle chit chat I don't kiss butt

I truly think where and who you work with makes a huge difference. When I worked in the hospital as a CNA nurses helped way more than they do in LTC facilities. In LTC its like a nurse has no time to help you where as in the hospital they will stop and help you if they can. But a nurses aid is a nurses aid. You are helping the nurse by changing a patient so they can pass meds or something else you can't do. It is a very tough and under paid job. I became a CNA in high school so I didn't waste time on those classes. I just got accepted into the RN program for fall 2013. It took me 5 years to do pre-reqs because I have 5 kids and work part time. So, while patients may not thank you, most are in pain, confused, etc. Trust me your nurses are very thankful even if they don't always say it. I love the nurses where I work, they always say thank you and appreciate what I do to help make their job easier :) Good luck.[/quote']

Btw I'm glad ur in a pleasant working environment with helpful nurses. The long term/ dementia unit I'm working now as a permanent cna has really cool nurses only a couple are snobs but easily can be ignored by me, the rehab wing has the nastiest, bossier most miserable lazy hag nurses and rehab residents are lazy whiny demanding and cranky I like the dementia unit except getting my butt whooped lol but I'd rather get my butt whooped by a dementia patient than have a rehab patient who takes an hour of my time and pushing the call bell 24/7 good luck with ur hospital job happy for u to work with good nurses makes ur day run smoothly

Btw I'm glad ur in a pleasant working environment with helpful nurses. The long term/ dementia unit I'm working now as a permanent cna has really cool nurses only a couple are snobs but easily can be ignored by me, the rehab wing has the nastiest, bossier most miserable lazy hag nurses and rehab residents are lazy whiny demanding and cranky I like the dementia unit except getting my butt whooped lol but I'd rather get my butt whooped by a dementia patient than have a rehab patient who takes an hour of my time and pushing the call bell 24/7 good luck with ur hospital job happy for u to work with good nurses makes ur day run smoothly

Great point .... It's funny, we're assistants to the nurses, but the nurses we assist make or break our day/ job! There are nurses I work with that are amazing. They not only help, but they'll do things for me (like change a patient/help a patient to the BR, etc) with out even thinking about asking me or bothering me while I'm busy with another patient. Then there are nurses who will be with a patient that needs assistance and instead of just simply doing whatever that patient needs, will look for me for quite sometime, to tell me to go take care of that patient.... When it could have simply been accomplished by them already in that time they wasted looking for me or waiting for me to finish with what I was in the middle of. Similarly, there are nurses who ask me to do the simplest most menial things... which irritates me. For example: a nurse walks out of a room and notices the "hand washing" sanitizer outside the room is empty. Instead of running to the supply room directly across the hall to replace it, she finds me to tell me it is empty and if I could please refill it, that would be great. Seriously?? Makes you wanna pull your hair out! Pure laziness! Some people are great workers, team players and amazing nurses .... But a lot of the time, the best nurses (from a patient and a CNA point if view) are those nurses that started off as a CNA.

Great point .... It's funny, we're assistants to the nurses, but the nurses we assist make or break our day/ job! There are nurses I work with that are amazing. They not only help, but they'll do things for me (like change a patient/help a patient to the BR, etc) with out even thinking about asking me or bothering me while I'm busy with another patient. Then there are nurses who will be with a patient that needs assistance and instead of just simply doing whatever that patient needs, will look for me for quite sometime, to tell me to go take care of that patient.... When it could have simply been accomplished by them already in that time they wasted looking for me or waiting for me to finish with what I was in the middle of. Similarly, there are nurses who ask me to do the simplest most menial things... which irritates me. For example: a nurse walks out of a room and notices the "hand washing" sanitizer outside the room is empty. Instead of running to the supply room directly across the hall to replace it, she finds me to tell me it is empty and if I could please refill it, that would be great. Seriously?? Makes you wanna pull your hair out! Pure laziness! Some people are great workers, team players and amazing nurses .... But a lot of the time, the best nurses (from a patient and a CNA point if view) are those nurses that started off as a CNA.

Amen I really agree. The story of my work life as a cna lol. Do u work in a nursing home? Hospitals are just about the same as a nursing home. I had one evil nurse "Doris" about 5years ago dis impact a very constipated bed ridden patient and she had the nerve to yell at me from down the hall to clean up miss Julia when she was in the room dis impacting her she didn't have the nerve to dispose of the bm properly left it under poor Julia's fragile butt. I was so ****** I cleaned up poor julia but what d did was total laziness she had nerve to say its not her job to wipe bm it's mine yet I said u were in her room dis impacting her and she coulda done it and saved us some time and effort. D no longer works with us but we have a buch of piece of work nurses who are lazy and rude pure misery. I'm polite but I don't kiss butts. I don't think I should go out of my way to get rotten people to like me. I'm just myself. Nothing wrong with that.

Then again we have plain nice nurses who were cnas or took a short semester of basic patient care, we do however had nurses who were cnas and they are on a power trip and evil lazy demanding its all about their personality lazy cnas becoming nurses and just as lazy more demanding on a power trip

Amen I really agree. The story of my work life as a cna lol. Do u work in a nursing home? Hospitals are just about the same as a nursing home. I had one evil nurse "Doris" about 5years ago dis impact a very constipated bed ridden patient and she had the nerve to yell at me from down the hall to clean up miss Julia when she was in the room dis impacting her she didn't have the nerve to dispose of the bm properly left it under poor Julia's fragile butt. I was so ****** I cleaned up poor julia but what d did was total laziness she had nerve to say its not her job to wipe bm it's mine yet I said u were in her room dis impacting her and she coulda done it and saved us some time and effort. D no longer works with us but we have a buch of piece of work nurses who are lazy and rude pure misery. I'm polite but I don't kiss butts. I don't think I should go out of my way to get rotten people to like me. I'm just myself. Nothing wrong with that.

I work at a hospital. :) I trained at a LTC though. I can't remember there even being nurses around other than the ADN and the nurse teaching us there!

Specializes in n/a.

I work as a cna in a hospital right beside nurses. Trust me, you'll still be doing baths and cleaning poop as a nurse. Not as much, but you still do. You get yelled at more as a nurse because you control the meds. If you hate being a cna, you'll probably hate being a nurse also. (Btw, I usually have a chart in my hand and a stethoscope around my neck lol. It all depends on where you work.)

I work at a hospital. :) I trained at a LTC though. I can't remember there even being nurses around other than the ADN and the nurse teaching us there!

Cool that's cool u got a hospital job right away the hospitals in my area prefer us to have experience yet I have such a hard time getting in hospitals after 9years cna exp

The hospitals in my area are cutting costs and their pcts/pcas that's what cnas are called in hospitals good luck w ur job

Cool that's cool u got a hospital job right away the hospitals in my area prefer us to have experience yet I have such a hard time getting in hospitals after 9years cna exp

The hospitals in my area are cutting costs and their pcts/pcas that's what cnas are called in hospitals good luck w ur job

I know! I felt very blessed and lucky to land a hospital job with no experience. I believe however, the fact that I had a bachelors degree already in bio and want to pursue nursing helped. Also I got my BS in biology from the university the hospital is affiliated with. I work for the state to boot. Pension, all that good stuff! Where I work we're called CA's -- clinical assistants. Where are you from?

Specializes in Med-Surg, NICU.

I work as a nurse's aide in a hospital setting with fairly healthy patients. I find that more than seven or eight patients is too much, I couldn't imagine having forty patients (I've had fifteen and went nuts).

And eight bucks an hour? That's an insult. You might as well work at Target.

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