Forgetting CNA Skills... =(

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I'm a little nervous about when I do start nursing school (hopefully August, if I get in...) that I will have forgotten some CNA skills. For example, I do not remember how to make the bed correctly. I remember you make half, and then the other half, but I remember there are a few different sheets and I don't feel like I would make the bed the right way. Does anyone know if they review these kinds of things in nursing school, or should I look into some kind of CNA skill review videos and such? I'm already planning to practice blood pressure on my poor fiancee and my kids, lol.

I work at a job right now that pays around $25 an hour, so it would not make financial sense for me to pursue a CNA job while in school - and I've considered a part time CNA job, but there just won't be the time to work 2 jobs while in nursing school.

If anyone has any CNA review videos (I really would watch a video on making the bed, I'm so nervous about it!), that would be awesome. I certified originally to be a CNA in 2008, and just did one 8 hour clinical to renew in 2010. I only had one patient and she was really sick, so other than cleaning her off and basic grooming, I didn't do much in the way of review skills.

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Specializes in Infusion.

I kept my skills booklet from my CNA class. We needed to be certified as CNAs in order to apply to our nursing school but it didn't make sense for me to become a CNA either. I am a very rusty CNA at best. Practice on your family and on anyone in your clinical group that will let you (BPs, that is). After awhile, you will be using more of your new nurse skills but for the first few months, you will be doing some CNA stuff. If you are assigned a patient, try to think about the kinds of direct nursing care that that patient may need and read up the night before or bring a CNA booklet with you.

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What are you going for your LVN/LPN or RN? I will tell you what my hopefully future teacher told me as well as a few nursing school grads told me the same thing (I took a prereq with my future nursing school teacher) They told me that you are to make the beds and do things such as start IV's the way they tell you to do it, and even if you get the same result from what you have learned previously that you will most likely be graded only on how THEY tell you how to do it. So I would say you should be fine as long as you worry more about the concrete things such as A&P, Med math (conversions), Med Term, and possibly review your pharmacology book they give you since medicine changes rapidly but you will learning from the book with the info you will be required to know taking your nclex. Bed making skills, IV, things like that your teacher may have a certain way they want you to do it and that's something you will only learn from them. So don't worry about that stuff just pay attention, take notes so they understand that you are trying to listen and comprehend carefully. That's my advice although I am not a nursing student yet I am 95% sure I will be in August.

Good luck I hope this helped a bit :D

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Thanks very much!! And I'll be going for the RN at a community college (4 semesters), but after the first two semesters I could take the LPN exam. That makes perfect sense about the beds, every place probably has their own way of doing things.

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When it comes to the skills videos, I have been watching the ones on youtube by jtduncan56. They are step by steps for the NC CNA test but seem to match up pretty well for the Florida exam too.

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Specializes in CNA.

Quite a few new grads are having hard a hard time finding jobs right now. I'd wager ones having an especially hard time are the ones with zero healthcare experience because they could not give up those sweet $25 an hour jobs.

At least they still have that income.

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Don't stress a lot over this. The CNA skills, while important, do not matter that much. In my program, we spent maybe 30 hours total on them.

If you are worried about it, I would follow brighteyedgirl_1980's advice and hit youtube for refresher videos. The ones by jtduncan56 are especially good (I'm biased, though, I went through that program before NS).

Good luck!

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Quite a few new grads are having hard a hard time finding jobs right now. I'd wager ones having an especially hard time are the ones with zero healthcare experience because they could not give up those sweet $25 an hour jobs.

At least they still have that income.

Hm, somehow I think I'll be just fine. The fact that I've managed a 5 office network for the last 7 years just might give future employers a little insight into the fact that I'm not lazy, and am a hard worker with a strong work background. It would most likely make more sense that a Network Admin is switching to an RN career, than a CNA job. If you were hiring CNAs, who would you pick? The Network Admin previously making in the 50's, or the student right out of school that $10 an hour makes sense for? You'd go for the student w/no or little previous experience. I'm asking my question so I can brush up on CNA skills, I really don't need rude or discouraging comments. Some people have children and a mortgage, and $10 an hour just doesn't support a family. Also, working 2 jobs would hardly leave time to put enough study time into nursing classes. You don't know what kind of job I'll be looking for when I graduate either --- not a lot of nurses with extensive IT experience, and I see lots of companies hiring for that - Epic, etc. So please don't go around discouraging people that aren't going to become CNAs because you feel everyone should have CNA experience.

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Specializes in CNA.
So please don't go around discouraging people that aren't going to become CNAs because you feel everyone should have CNA experience.

I didn't invent the concept that having on the job experience is important, I am passing it along from very experienced nurses. I am a mechanical engineer and have extensive corporate, networking, IT, project management, design, and quality engineering experience.

None of it really means crap if you are looking for healthcare job in a tight economy.

If you are applying for a job managing patient care and someone asks you, "Have you ever had a job where you cared for patients before?" You kind of want that answer to be "Yes." You don't have to quit your current job, just balance it out a bit. It really is good experience.

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Specializes in School Nursing.

Well I personally wouldn't give up a $25/hr job for an $8-$10 one either. Experience is important, but people DO hire new grads and in two years this hiring freezes may be completely over and hospitals will be sucking up new grads left and right. If not, guess what? She still has a $24/hr job to keep her family fed until she does land a nursing job.

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Depending on what your nursing program is like, you may learn a lot of those CNA skills over again. I know in my program we had to take an 8-week "Fundamentals" lecture and lab where we learned how to make beds, give bed baths, and other skills that CNAs usually do. We had to pass the class before we could proceed to clinical. You could actually skip the lab if you were a CNA and provided proof, but our instructor encouraged CNAs to take the course if they had the means so that any bad habits could be corrected. Now both of the CNAs I know who opted out of the course say that they wished they would have taken it.

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