Is it necessary to be a CNA b4 nursing school?

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Hi - I'm not sure what to do on this one. I'm thinking of getting my CNA but I've heard it's a lot of butt wiping and horrible work. I'm going to start volunteering and job shadowing and I'm wondering if this will give me good experience/exposure to nursing so I can bypass being a CNA? In your experience, do most new nurses have previous health care experience?

Thanks for all your feedback!!!

Guess what, I DO work in NICU (hence the screen name RN4NICU). Actually, I should say I did work in NICU - I'm no longer a bedside nurse - but I AM still a nurse.

I never said there was anything bad about butt wiping, I said it wasn't for me (and it isn't for a lot of people) - there is nothing wrong with that and it is not a legitimate reason to tell someone not to be a nurse - there are other opportunities out there - some of them don't involve any kind of patient care at all. THAT is what my posts were about.

Chill out! It was a humorous post. Besides I was talking to the OP when I siad to go work in areas with little butts. I can read your name, and I can put 2 and 2 together. I think you need a vacation. :whe!:

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Chill out! It was a humorous post. Besides I was talking to the OP when I siad to go work in areas with little butts. I can read your name, and I can put 2 and 2 together. I think you need a vacation. :whe!:

Why don't you chill out? If you weren't talking to me, you shouldn't have quoted my post.

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Specializes in Operating Room.
Dear Witchy,

If you were a CNA while being "taught to be a nurse" you would realize little of this has to do with "butt wiping" and your Code Brown stigma is sadly degrading to the elderly; the thought alone is sad.

CNA's learn people skills; that means being with the client 100% and in the added advantage of being a BS nursing student given all other "nursing duties" so it was to me a gift. If a client became incontinent thank God he or she was treated with dignity by this "nurse."

Karen G.

First off, Code Brown is a fairly widely used term and I never say it in front of patients. I pride myself on the fact that I provide pyschological support to my patients before induction and while waking up. I then advocate for that patient when they are unconscious. I am with that patient 100%. If you knew anything about anesthesia and the OR environment for that matter, you would know that while Code Browns can happen to anyone, they'll most likely happen to someone who has incontinence issues to begin with...usually the elderly. I think anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence realizes that what we do and say in front of patients and what we say on here, are two very different things. :icon_roll

You do not know me and I was extremely offended by your high handed and judgemental post. I've heard plenty of floor nurses use the term "code brown" here and nary a word was said. My point was that one does not need a class to teach them how to clean a patient. Many good nurses have gone through nursing school and never taken a CNA class. If it helped you, great. I've heard that BSN programs are a little short on the clinical experience, so it probably gave you more exposure, which is a good thing. Just don't assume that everyone's needs are the same.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.
Hi - I'm not sure what to do on this one. I'm thinking of getting my CNA but I've heard it's a lot of butt wiping and horrible work. I'm going to start volunteering and job shadowing and I'm wondering if this will give me good experience/exposure to nursing so I can bypass being a CNA? In your experience, do most new nurses have previous health care experience?

Thanks for all your feedback!!!

For me, being a CNA taught me a lot about people and about myself. Though being a CNA for me was a stepping stone and not a long term career choice, I learned a lot from the experience, and I'm glad I did it.:redbeathe

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Why don't you chill out? If you weren't talking to me, you shouldn't have quoted my post.

I picked the post that actually listed nursing positions that don't need butt wiping skills. Like as if pt care was so horrible, someone would change their career to avoid it. I'm not going to argue with you anymore, but I wonder what kind of nurse someone could be if they out right avoid pt care of the butt wiping sort. That's how you create these "god like RNs" people post about, that go looking for 15 minutes to find a CNA instead of just cleaning the pt themselves. (BTW, I'm an RN, and like I said, I don't mind wiping butts. Its not all I do, but I'm am not above it.)

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Specializes in Operating Room.
I picked the post that actually listed nursing positions that don't need butt wiping skills. Like as if pt care was so horrible, someone would change their career to avoid it. I'm not going to argue with you anymore, but I wonder what kind of nurse someone could be if they out right avoid pt care of the butt wiping sort. That's how you create these "god like RNs" people post about, that go looking for 15 minutes to find a CNA instead of just cleaning the pt themselves. (BTW, I'm an RN, and like I said, I don't mind wiping butts. Its not all I do, but I'm am not above it.)
She was asked which positions don't require acute patient care and she complied. If you're going to tell me you actually enjoy cleaning fecal matter, I'm not going to believe you. Which is it? On the one hand, you and several others have said that CNA skills are so much more than butt wiping, yet you seem to be fixated on who will wipe them and who won't. :rolleyes:

The wonderful thing about nursing is its flexibility...I would rather have toothpicks shoved under my fingernails than work in LTC, for example, but this doesn't mean that LTC is a horrible place or that people who love that environment are screwed up. I don't think it's your place to call into question the dedication and skills of people you've never met. We all have our likes and dislikes and rather than be judgemental, I think we should stay on topic. :twocents:

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Specializes in Operating Room.

I'm sorry, I just don't understand this post. Maybe I am cluelesss, but I just can't wrap my head around why someone would want to go into nursing, but not want to "deal with" patient care. I thought that's why we all became nurses. Patient care is why I want so desprately to be a nurse. If I didn't want to deal with patient care, I would study accounting and work in billing/ hospital finance.

I also don't understand how this thread got so far away from the OP's question.

I hear you about going off topic. I will say that someone elses motivations for choosing nursing aren't really your business. Plenty of choices out there for everyone. Most people do some sort of patient care eventually, because in different units, patient care means different things. For example, I don't really start that many IV's in my area(although I can) but I do at least one foley a day, and I'm very careful in the way I position a patient on the OR table, because you can cause nerve damage if it is done incorrectly. Or when I scrub, I put on sterile dressings and cut suture, retract, etc. Sometimes, I have my hands deep into that patient helping the doctor. That's patient care.

Even people that do telephone triage in my mind do patient care because they are assessing that patient.

Thinking that only med/surg nurses and CNAs do "real" patient care is extremely narrow minded, IMO.:nono:

For the record, I'm done here too.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Geriatrics.
She was asked which positions don't require acute patient care and she complied. If you're going to tell me you actually enjoy cleaning fecal matter, I'm not going to believe you.

Even people that do telephone triage in my mind do patient care because they are assessing that patient.

Thinking that only med/surg nurses and CNAs do "real" patient care is extremely narrow minded, IMO.:nono:

I must agree here. Can we be honest? Cleaning fecal matter is a necessary evil. I don't enjoy it, never have and never will. It gets done because it must be done but I am not going to pretend that it is some sort of honor that I look forward to because I don't(or didn't as I don't do bedside nursing anymore).

As for a nurse who doesn't want to do patient care, well nursing is the practice of helping a patient to maintain or return to an optimal state of health and that can be achieved in many ways. You don't have to put your hands on a person to be a vital part of helping them to maintain or return to their best health. That is why I get so frustrated at the fixation on learning tasks and maintaining "skills" which anyone can learn with time and through repetition. Nursing is more than that. Which takes us back to the OP and why it is not necessary to become a CNA prior to nursing school.....

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I hear you about going off topic. I will say that someone elses motivations for choosing nursing aren't really your business. Plenty of choices out there for everyone. Most people do some sort of patient care eventually, because in different units, patient care means different things. For example, I don't really start that many IV's in my area(although I can) but I do at least one foley a day, and I'm very careful in the way I position a patient on the OR table, because you can cause nerve damage if it is done incorrectly. Or when I scrub, I put on sterile dressings and cut suture, retract, etc. Sometimes, I have my hands deep into that patient helping the doctor. That's patient care.

Even people that do telephone triage in my mind do patient care because they are assessing that patient.

Thinking that only med/surg nurses and CNAs do "real" patient care is extremely narrow minded, IMO.:nono:

For the record, I'm done here too.

I wasn't implying that med-surg CNA's and nurses are the only ones that do real patient care, I was just responding to someone who directly said they don't do patient care. I didn't infer anything. I didn't want to insult anyone or add to the hostility of this thread, but I just sincerly wanted to know. That's why I am on this site- to learn from nurses who are more educated and more experienced than I am. Sorry if my niavety came off as rudeness, but like I said before I just wanted to know.

Still, I highly doubt that you got to the point you are in your career without ever working in a Med-Surg type environment. The OP is clearly just starting her nusing education/career, so Med-Surg is just more relavent to her.

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Specializes in Operating Room.
I wasn't implying that med-surg CNA's and nurses are the only ones that do real patient care, I was just responding to someone who directly said they don't do patient care. I didn't infer anything. I didn't want to insult anyone or add to the hostility of this thread, but I just sincerly wanted to know. That's why I am on this site- to learn from nurses who are more educated and more experienced than I am. Sorry if my niavety came off as rudeness, but like I said before I just wanted to know.

Still, I highly doubt that you got to the point you are in your career without ever working in a Med-Surg type environment. The OP is clearly just starting her nusing education/career, so Med-Surg is just more relavent to her.

Actually, apart from a month of "observation" as part of grad nurse training, I've never worked med/surg(did med/surg clinicals of course). Many specialties are hiring new grads and these new grads do just fine. In my new grad group, we had people who went right to the OR(me amd 2 other people), the ER, and the ICU.Ironically, the few that had problems adjusting went to regular floors-I think because of all the understaffing etc. The old idea that new nurses must spend a year or two in med/surg is fast falling by the wayside.

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Actually, apart from a month of "observation" as part of grad nurse training, I've never worked med/surg(did med/surg clinicals of course). Many specialties are hiring new grads and these new grads do just fine. In my new grad group, we had people who went right to the OR(me amd 2 other people), the ER, and the ICU.Ironically, the few that had problems adjusting went to regular floors-I think because of all the understaffing etc. The old idea that new nurses must spend a year or two in med/surg is fast falling by the wayside.

I agree. I have been a nurse for more than a decade and I have never worked med/surg. Never wanted to, never did. It was that simple.

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Specializes in Quality Management.

In my class of first year nursing students the CNA's are all better prepared for exams, better at completing AM care in clinicals, and have a greater practical knowledge of "how things get done in a hospital" than the rest of us who have little or no experience with nursing care. (I had extensive experience in the military but it was so long ago that I don't credit it for much.)

Several wizened nursing professionals have told me, independently, that nursing school is not about teaching you everything you need to know to be a nurse. Students gain as many, if not more, skills during the first six months of work as a graduate nurse than we do in all of school. No, nursing school is about changing your head, converting a non-nurse into a potential candidate. This is sort of the same thing the military does in boot camp. Time spent in nursing school is a period of psychological adjustment just as much as a time of instruction. CNA's (in my opinion) have already made this adjustment and are therefore far ahead of the game.

So to address the original poster's question :typing I think that CNA experience, while perhaps not "required," would be valuable to any nursing student.

paganoid

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