Does becoming a CNA help you if you want to become an RN?

lovethecrazylife · Jan 4, 2014

Being a CNA will help you get the basics of caring for patients. I feel it should be a requirement to become a nurse

schnookimz · Jan 4, 2014

Of course any experience in the field helps.

duskyjewel · Jan 8, 2014

From the perspective of a CNA who works with nurses, let me tell you I can tell the difference. The ones who were CNAs first are better nurses, and they also almost never have that uppity attitude about how they "don't do aide work."

Mela2009 · Jan 8, 2014

From the perspective of a CNA who works with nurses let me tell you I can tell the difference. The ones who were CNAs first are better nurses, and they also almost never have that uppity attitude about how they "don't do aide work."[/quote'] I totally agree with you, I often experience the nurses at my job thinking that they are too good to do CNA work. I know for a fact that nurses who were CNA's before are definitely better nurses. My personal opinion is that you should always remain humble what your job title is, and most important never forget where you came from and what it took for you to get to where you are today.

Mela2009 · Jan 8, 2014

I totally agree with you I often experience the nurses at my job thinking that they are too good to do CNA work. I know for a fact that nurses who were CNA's before are definitely better nurses. My personal opinion is that you should always remain humble what your job title is, and most important never forget where you came from and what it took for you to get to where you are today.[/quote'] Sorry for the typo, I meant to say that we should always remain humble & grateful no matter what our job title is.

kaydensmom01 · Jan 8, 2014

I totally agree with you, I often experience the nurses at my job thinking that they are too good to do CNA work. I know for a fact that nurses who were CNA's before are definitely better nurses. My personal opinion is that you should always remain humble what your job title is, and most important never forget where you came from and what it took for you to get to where you are today.

Not meaning to sound ignorant, but I have never understood what gives a nurses aide the qualifications to determine what is considered a "good nurse"? So in an aides eyes a "better nurse" is one who is not afraid to do the "dirty work", when in reality nursing is so much more than that and that should be taken into account when determining what a "good nurse" is, not only if they will do the dirty work. No offense, just wondering.

To the OP, being an aide certainly does help with being more comfortable with the basics of patient care and patient interaction- it helps with little after this though. Regardless if you are an aide or not you ARE able to be a good nurse, it will just take a little more time to get "comfortable" around the patients.

A nurse should never consider themselves too good to do anything, but a nurses aide's job and a nurses job are two different things- everyone should remain a team though.

duskyjewel · Jan 9, 2014

IME the attitude of being above "aide work" almost always rides along with bad attitude, lack of caring presence at bedside, and the minimalist tendency to do the absolute least they can get away with during a shift. The ones who would spend ten minutes looking for me to tell me to put someone on a commode instead of doing it while they were already there were the same ones facebooking on their phones while ignoring call lights. I think you'd have to agree that none of those constitute being a good nurse. I'm sorry you feel I'm not qualified, but I think even the most untrained layperson can even usually tell the good nurses from the not-good ones.

glitterglamRN · Jan 9, 2014

Totally! I started off as a CNA and I feel that it helped me a lot as a RN. You'll LEARN so much from the basics and fundamentals of nursing just by being a CNA. plus, you earn a lot of respect I believe because you know both sides as a CNA and RN, which helps with a lot of teamwork. Hope this helps

kaydensmom01 · Jan 9, 2014

IME the attitude of being above "aide work" almost always rides along with bad attitude, lack of caring presence at bedside, and the minimalist tendency to do the absolute least they can get away with during a shift. The ones who would spend ten minutes looking for me to tell me to put someone on a commode instead of doing it while they were already there were the same ones facebooking on their phones while ignoring call lights. I think you'd have to agree that none of those constitute being a good nurse. I'm sorry you feel I'm not qualified, but I think even the most untrained layperson can even usually tell the good nurses from the not-good ones.

Of course that is not being a good nurse, but what I am trying to point out is it has nothing to do with if a nurse was an aide before or not. Everyone said "I can tell if a nurse was an aide before 2 minutes after meeting her", implying that a "good nurse" was an aide. You see what you want to see, and see a "good nurse" and automatically want to assume that they were an aide. I have met nurses that had the "aide work" mentality and they consisted of nurses that were not CNA's previously but were also made up just as much with previous aides that "didn't go to school to do the same thing that they had been doing". Being an aide previously does not mean that you are automatically humbled and a good nurse. Nurses that were not aides previously can and are just as good as those that were because as I said before being an aide and being a nurse are two completely different jobs.

allnurses Guide · Jan 11, 2014

I think even the most untrained layperson can even usually tell the good nurses from the not-good ones.

Not really.

Laypeople have no clue what all a nurse's duty entails behind the scenes.

Just because the nurse puts them on the bedpan with a smile on her face does not mean she is a good nurse.

The same nurse who rocks doing "aide work" could be ignoring her labs, not giving her meds, not following up on care, falsifying documentation, missing signs that her patient is starting to circle the drain and goodness know what else.

A nurse that is too busy to be so amazing as to answer that call light may actually be doing all that really important stuff people don't even know about.

Where are people working that they have coworkers on Facebook?

I have honestly never seen that.

duskyjewel · Jan 12, 2014

Where are people working that they have coworkers on Facebook?
I have honestly never seen that.

I wish I could say I made that up. Now, let me be clear here: if you hit a slow patch during your shift and you take a look at your phone, I'm not going to get all up in your kool aid because I do the same thing. But when there are call lights going off and they're not getting answered because everyone is busy, put it down and do your job. And call lights are everyone's job.

There were many reasons I needed to leave my previous job, this was just one of them. Once while I was sitting at a workstation charting vitals, I witnessed the charge nurse and another aide not only work around the IT block and get to facebook, but hack into a third party's account after that. (This same charge nurse openly admitted to pretty much everyone on the shift one night that she was plaigiarizing her BSN papers, as well. Her maturity level left a lot to be desired, obviously.) I witnessed so many things that I wondered how people didn't get fired or written up..... and this was at a major hospital chain that is currently working toward magnet status. If I said the name, you'd all recognize it.

Some places just have toxic culture.