Is being a CNA imperative?

[chloeluvsutoo]

I will be applying for nursing school next year however I am having to make a choice. Do I take the time and money to become a CNA, when it is not required by my school? Or do i just work a job that'll pay me more yet not have much to do with nursing as a career? And if i do become a CNA should I also get my phlebotomy certificate? Any feed back is helpful! Thank you

[NurseGirl525, ASN, RN]

The answer is no, it is not imperative. Yes, for some people it does help getting comfortable with patients, but you do that the first semester anyway. My instructors had asked for those that were techs or cnas to raise their hand the first week. They told them to not bring their bad habits in and do what was in our labs for checkoffs. I quickly understood why.

There were a couple of techs that had a hard time with checkoffs. The reason? They were used to how they were taught and how their facility did things compared to how we were to do it in nursing school. We are in third semester and they are still having issues in theory. While it's true that nursing school is not the real world of nursing, these girls are not understanding that they need to treat school as a different facility than their own with their own rules. I've seen it be a struggle for 2 particular girls who always like to say well at my facility this is how we do it, when they get a test answer wrong. I'm foreseeing troubles with passing NCLEX.

You will make connections in clinical. If you are deathly afraid of dealing with people it may help you, but first semester is all about the basics and one of those is therapeutic communication.

I'm just one of those people that doesn't want that job. They don't get paid nearly enough for the work they do and it's not for me. If I am going to be doing that back-breaking work, I want to get paid for it decently. When I do those things as a nurse next year, I will be getting paid for it at a decent pay.

It's completely up to you. I'm starting to apply for student externship positions to get my foot in the door places. There are other ways than becoming a cna.

I'm not putting down the cna job at all. I have the utmost respect for techs and what they do. But they don't get paid enough for what they do. Around here I think it's $9-10 an hour. I can't justify it, but I have respect for those that do it. They are not appreciated nearly enough.