most interesting duties/responsibility as a CNA

JDZ344 · Jan 2, 2012

I've worked all over.

ER is very interesting. Depending on your hospitals policies you can watch/assist with lots of things. Really insane busy, though, and in my experience the staff spend a lot of time transporting people to X-Ray/CT/floors (if the hospital has patient transport who do that, then that's a big bonus!)

L&D: Can be nice, generally a happy place to work.

Children: Is fun normally. Hard when you deal with really sick kids, though.

Med/Surg/floor: hard work and busy, you can do a lot of stuff if your hospital allows it, such as d/c IV/foleys, drawing labs, EKGs.

fjellerup · Jan 2, 2012

Thanks Katie. Of course what a CNA would be allowed to do will vary greatly depending on the hospital, as you point out.

A former LVN that I worked with was an ER cna for a while. He said he loved how much he got to do.

Do you know what I would expect as and ICU cna? or perioperative?

JDZ344 · Jan 2, 2012

I can only go by where I work, but in my hospitals, the support staff in the ICU do very little patient care, as the ratio is one patient per RN. They do a lot of stocking up, assist with turning/washing/cleaning patients as requested. Pretty much nothing technical, as the nurses are there all the time.

I've never worked in peri-operative. I hope there is someone on this board who has, who can let you know about it :)

northernguy · Jan 3, 2012

I work on a Med/Surg unit. I dont know that any of the CNA duties are particularly interesting. Its standard CNA stuff. Vitals, emptying foleys and drains, I&O, ADLs, Ostomy care, ambulating, feeding, repositioning, telemetry, DCing IVs NGs, and Foleys, dealing with orthopedic devices for some surgical patients.

What is interesting is watching and learning from the RNs and seeing a variety of disease pathologies and conditions in person. You can look through the patients chart and see what is going on, what medications are being given, diagnostic tests and labs being done, etc. Although if you arent a nursing student a lot of it is going to be like reading greek. Usually though you are too busy to do anything but CNA duties.

Even in a big city like Houston I doubt hospital CNA jobs are so plentiful you will be able to pick and choose the exact unit you work on. Whatever jobs open up probably have a lot of applicants, many with hospital experience, maybe from the same hospital.

ER tech would be the most interesting, but as a CNA with no hospital experience there is little to no chance of getting that job unless you are an EMT with experience doing 911 calls.

DarkBluePhoenix · Jan 4, 2012

I agree with northern, I, too, work in a Med-Surg/Tele department. Of course its busy and you see a lot more procedures done than say in LTC but you don't do anything special yourself. You do your regular work. What is cool though, especially if you communicate to the nurses that you want to continue in the field of nursing sometimes they will pull you in to show you unique procedures and stuff. It's nice to see that stuff and some nurses will even show you how to do it (your not allowed to actually do the procedure of course, based on scope of practice but its nice to know). That way when you finally enter nursing school you will be pretty knowledgeable about some skills you see on a weekly basis. Plus I really think MST is a good department to start out in when you become a nurse. It sets a good foundation for your nursing career and all the skills you gain.

About ER, I think you have to be an EMT to work in ER or have some prior nursing assist experience in emergency . Very hard to start out there.

ICU would he interesting but again you will probably need some sort of acute care experience.