CNA to RN

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Do you feel having work experience as a CNA made nursing school easier for you? Also, I'd love to hear your stories about your career as a CNA. :)

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Mystic Topaz, in my experience I personally feel like the experience is both good and bad. It is good because you quickly realize that nursing school is not preparing you for what really goes on in the hospital, but it's bad because you pick up hospital habits that don't follow the "ivory tower nursing" they want in school. I was called out my first skills lab day of my very first semester for asking questions about the way things are done at work as opposed to what the instructor wanted. I quickly learned to just do things the instructors way and move on... it gets easier as the semesters pass. Overall, it didn't help much. Hope this helps...

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Yes, and thank you. I've always done things my own way AS LONG AS IT'S RIGHT, so if the hospital habits work for me... Well, you know! :)

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CNA work made nursing school possible. There aren't many jobs that can be worked around school hours. I worked every weekend and lots of 3-11 evenings to earn money to pay the tuition and books.

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I don't know that it helps, I think pmunoz is spot on. It does give you excellent experience though and one day when you are an RN you will value your CNAs. Personally I think it should be a pre-req for nursing school. I think it makes RNs better, I think you treat others better, I think it encourages team work, and CNAs see more of the patient experience than RNs, so I think it helps in that way also. Oh and it definitely can help you get your first RN job if your hospital will hire you.

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Yes! Night Crow^^ is so right. I forgot to mention I just passed NCLEX Nov 14, and my boss has been nice enough to hold a position for me- SINCE AUGUST! I am one of my the few in my cohort to have a job by the end of the year. My first day as an RN will be Thursday, but I have worked at my facility for 6 years. Good Luck!!

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Specializes in Medical-Surgical/ Neuroscience.

Well for me being a CNA in nursing school has its pros and cons. The pros of it was that since I already worked at the hospital where we had our clinical rotation I was familiar with the equipment, EMR system, etc. I was more comfortable in clinical compared to my colleagues that weren't CNAs or that didn't work there. The cons is that I had to re-learn the correct ways to do certain skills such as bed bathing and bed making just to name a few. Isn't a bad thing but I have collegues that just couldn't break their "CNA" habits. Other than that it was beneficial

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