I hate being a CNA

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Hi everyone, I really need some advice. So I'm going into my junior year as a BSN student. This summer i decided to get a CNA job as a way to get some experience and build my resume. I got hired at a "rehab" facility. Turns out, all the patients are basically hospice despite me being told they were all rehab patients. I have a total of 5 orientation shifts, and i just worked one so far. I hated it. I went home and cried. I really don't like doing that kind of care and I felt so lost and helpless. Just thinking about working another shift puts me on the verge of a panic attack. I don't need the money, but I need the experience, but I'd much rather work in a doctor's office or something. Everyone is saying just tough it out until the end of august, but I don't know how I'm going to get through another shift, much less 3 months. Any advice?

Specializes in ICU Stepdown.

I went back and read that you're in your junior year. Have you looked into the administration/management side of nursing? I don't know anything about it but I think it's worth researching

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Purple roses, I think its a little but of both. I'd rather do vitals and learn to do EKGs or something more technical and less turning and feeding and transferring. I also don't enjoy seeing patients who no longer want to live refuse food and not speak.

Some places don't even have CNA's. Nobody enjoys watching someone decline and die, but it's inevitable, a part of life and we all gotta do it one day. Like the previous poster was saying, it's about the compassion and comfort that can be given to that patient that matters. It's what being a Nurse is about, not so much the technical stuff. Nurses are special people who have huge hearts and will do unspeakable things to help their fellow humans. It's about love.

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Nursing is deff. what I want to do, just not in a LTC facility. Im actually looking to be a family nurse practitioner. That really has been one of my biggest reasons for going to nursing school.

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Specializes in ICU Stepdown.

Have you tried finding a job in a hospital? Honestly, you might as well tough it out. You may end up liking it. It's not the best job in the world but knowing that I make a difference in my resident's lives and put smiles on their faces makes it worth it every day. Especially realizing that my coworkers and I are the only people some of the old people have...

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Nursing... CNA work it all can be hard work and gross. I know many nurses that have to help with turning patients and transfers. I know many nurses that had to hold a puke Bucket for patients or help with a incontinent patient.

I have to honest here and say any nurse or CNA would love to ONLY do vitals or watch EKGs all day but the fact is that is not our only part of the job. Also a doctors office is not going to give you the education that a BSN nurse is going to need. Even in a hospital setting you are going to see and have to deal with gross things back breaking work and yes sad to say death.

Only having one shift is really not enough to judge how you like this job. Yes your first shift was not an easy one but tomorrow you might find it isn't so bad. Just remember that what you are experiencing here is a taste of what true nursing will entale, and you need to ask yourself if you hate the things you said you did then I am afraid you might hate nursing because even if you are not changing a brief every hour like you are now you are not going to get away from it completely once you are done with school

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Yes I've applied to a bunch of hospitals and just haven't heard back from them. Everyone wants someone with acute care experience but no one wants to take the chance on someone new.

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Specializes in ICU Stepdown.
Yes I've applied to a bunch of hospitals and just haven't heard back from them. Everyone wants someone with acute care experience but no one wants to take the chance on someone new.

Even being a third year nursing student?

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I just finished my second year, going into 3rd, but yes. despite being halfway done with school.

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This career field is like all career fields: You have to work your way from the bottom up. No one is going to plop you down right where you want to be from the very beginning, and it means you are going to have to do things you don't want to do, no matter if you're training to be a nurse or an electrician. If you can't do the basics, then you won't be able to do the more advanced work.

I will also offer this: Where I work, we have more respect for the nurses who are willing to assist us with patient care than the ones who see it as a hassle. We have one particular nurse who rolls her eyes at us anytime she has to get out of her chair, away from her blank computer screen, put down her cell phone, and stop bagging on hospital staff to actually do something with her patients other than, quite literally, shove pills in their faces.

Just as the RNs can make our jobs easier or harder, we can do the same to the RNs. This field requires a significant amount of empathy and compassion as well as putting others before self. To get right down to it, as a FNP, you are going to see many dying, incontinent patients as you will see cases of healthy people who have a general malaise. I would rather hold the hand of a person who is dying (which, by the way, is an incredibly moving experience) than to be the one who has to tell a young mother she has stage IV breast cancer.

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I can understand how you feel. There are parts of nursing care I'll never learn to like particularly the smellier BMs. I'd strongly advice you not to flee after just a few days though. That's a habit you don't want to acquire and certainly not a reputation you want to get as a nurse.

Keep in mind that your attitude is likely to improve when you get to know those patients better. They're also likely to relate to you better and perhaps be less resistant to what you must do. You're new, so they're likely to have as many issues with you as you with them. That will pass.

Learn a tip from Navy Seals. The Navy has studied why some people make it through the grind of Seal testing and most—three out of four— don't. One trait the successful have is that they always think in achievable goals. Sent off on a 20-mile run starting at 4 a.m., they don't think about the twenty miles. They think about reaching the top of the next hill and, when they get there, they think about reaching the stream down below. They always set "I can do that" goals and don't dwell on what can seem impossible at the time. Get to the top and bottom of enough hills and you'll make that twenty miles. And to the extent they think long term, they think of its rewards. At the end of that run, they remind themselves, lies a heaping big breakfast.

In the same way, getting through enough individual incidents of patient care and you'll get through the day. Get through enough days and you'll finish up this summer much stronger as a nurse. Things that once seem hard become no big deal.

That even works with caring for dying patients. My first work was on a pediatric Hem-Onc unit. Because the sickest kids spent the most time in the hospital, I knew that statistically at least two of the seven children I was caring for each night were likely to die. But I didn't think about that. Each night I resolved to give each of them the best possible care I could that night. And when the night ended and I went home, I saw what I had done as a success, irrespective of the long-term outcome. And when our treatments failed with some children, I shifted my resolve to giving them the best possible death, again one night at a time. I couldn't give those children life, but I could give them good care one night at a time.

My suggestion: Think a lot less about hanging in there until the "end of August" and focus more on accomplishing each particular task and getting through each individual day. Do that and the end of August will come.

And regard each of those little steps achieved as a success. "I did this.... I did that...." and not, "Oh my God! The end of August is still over three months away."

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Specializes in LTC Rehab Med/Surg.

Everything described you hate, is everything I do in any given shift. I'm a nurse. Our hospital is slowly, unannounced, going towards nurse only shifts. It's cost effective. I can do both jobs. If you just don't like doing personal care period, you're going to have a rough time being a nurse. Nurses won't want to work with you because you don't carry your weight, and CNAs won't want to work with you because you won't help.

It sounds like part of what you don't like is the "I don't know how". Stick it out and you'll learn how.

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Death is not sad! I mean, I understand why you feel that way about it. Many do. But death (especially in the elderly) is a 100% natural transition and literally happens to everyone. Instead of thinking "they're dying and I can't do anything about it" can you maybe think about it differently? Like, they're dying and it's an honour that you get to care for and support folks in this hugely significant time? Dying is literally the last thing anyone will ever do. Isn't it kind of neat that you get to be involved in that important time? They're dying and aren't you fortunate that you get to shine a little light into a scary time? They're dying, but until they're dead, they're still living​ and every day you get to bring a little more life to their last days?

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