experience before entering the nursing program

You will be fine! Trust me. Many students going into Nursing have never been around patients before. I had never been around hospitals, patients or any of it before I started and I am doing great! Just be confident, accountable and dependable and you will do great!

Is it necessary to do volunteer work or become a CNA to do very well in the nursing program I'm about to be in the nursing program soon, and I have not done anything.I feel like I'll be the only one stuggling because I do not have experience. Are there many students in your classes that do not have previous experience?

You'll probably be better off then the one's with experience IMO. You have fresh mine to grasp new concepts and information. Some people will be hard headed and think "their way" is the right way, to only find themselves with a wrong answer on a test or during clinicals.

Don't stress, enjoy your summer before it hits the fan.

Doesn't really matter. Though the EMTs/CNAs were much more "go getter" on the floors and in general from day 1 I noticed.

Some people might be offended by this, but I think working as a CNA will make you a better nurse. I respect the RNs I work with who were CNAs first a lot more...and you know why? Because they respect me. They understand how hard I work, they never talk down or treat me as below them, and they are more willing to help me with patient care when I need them.

Example: I am the only CNA on my unit one night, and I have 15 high-need telemetry patients. An RN calls me on Vocera (while I am doing care in another room) to tell me her patient needs a Sprite, and she knows this because she was just in his room. My favorite RN, the one I do things for first, he was a CNA and he would never and has never done anything that ridiculous. If you work as a CNA first, I guarantee you wouldn't do it either.

I am going to be a second year nursing student this August and I have a GREAT respect for CNA's. Our first clinical rotation was in a LTC facility and did a lot of work with the CNA's there. It absolutely gave me a better understanding of their work. That being said, I don't think you have to have the experience to be successful. In some cases there are CNA's in my class that have missed questions on exams because they think about the questions in real world terms instead of going by the perfect world in the book. Anyway, I don't think the experience truly hurts but I don't think it gives a huge advantage either, not if you're willing to put in the work. Good luck!

ImKosher is right. I never had any experience going into my nursing program, and I found that it was a lot better than if I had. There were multiple people in my class who had already had some experience and they didn't do so well. One of the students thought that even though she worked as a technician in some Radiology center, she didn't have to learn the "correct" way to do things by the teachers. Of course there is more than one way to do things, however, you're going to want to learn it and do it the way that the teacher (who is grading you, DUH!) is teaching you. Going into it without any previous experience will keep you fresh and will prevent you from having any previous bad habits. Generally the people who have had experience are also very cocky- they think they know more than they do, and the teachers recognize this and find it obnoxious. I had a classmate that told the rest of us that he could go ahead and take his exam on the first day without practicing the skills that we had to learn; he ended up failing. Go figure! Go into it with a fresh mind and eager to learn and you will do wonderful!