Pre-employment Physical for LNA

[Lindalamb8, CNA, EMT-B]

So I am an LNA who has worked for a while at a hospital. Was just interviewed for a position at a Nursing Home. Went well but they want me to have a pre-employment physical. I am worried that the physical will have me show that I can lift 50 lbs. Friend of mine said it was part of her pre-employment physical at a different facility. I can't lift 50 lbs to my chin. Does anyone think it is going to be part of the physical or am I worrying needlessly?

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

My last couple of pre-employment physicals they just asked me if I could lift 50 pounds, and if I had any medical restrictions against lifting. I answered "yes" and "no" and that was it.

[Mergirlc, MSN, APRN, NP]

Could either of you two please explain what happens at the pre-employment physical for nurses?

Do they put you in the gown and give you an actual visual exam (lift the gown, inspect your abdominal areas, back, etc..) as you would w/ your normal primary doctor? Or is this mainly you walk in dressed in regular clothes and they do basics such as BP, breathing, heart, etc..?

I've only had a physical for one non-healthcare job and it was very basic , such as touch your toes, walk, bend/squat and then the urine drug test.

[Cricket183, BSN, RN]

My recent pre-employment testing was extensive! It not only included a series of lifting exercises of increasing weights (from floor to waist (squat), transfer from counter to counter, lift from waist to overhead, pushing and pulling a weighted sleigh a specified distance, etc); it also included a timed step test with pre & post vital signs, urine drug screen, and a PT eval of my ROM, medical background, etc. It was very similar to a functional capacity exam and took 2 1/2-3 hours. It was crazy!

Every place I’ve ever worked before you just had to go in do one simple lift test (basically a squat with 50lbs).

Depends entirely on the institution!

[Mergirlc, MSN, APRN, NP]

1 hour ago, Cricket183 said:

My recent pre-employment testing was extensive! It not only included a series of lifting exercises of increasing weights (from floor to waist (squat), transfer from counter to counter, lift from waist to overhead, pushing and pulling a weighted sleigh a specified distance, etc); it also included a timed step test with pre & post vital signs, urine drug screen, and a PT eval of my ROM, medical background, etc. It was very similar to a functional capacity exam and took 2 1/2-3 hours. It was crazy!

Every place I’ve ever worked before you just had to go in do one simple lift test (basically a squat with 50lbs).

Depends entirely on the institution!

Geeze, it sounds as if you were trying to make it on an Olympic sporting team with that physical! That's nuts.

When I hear "physical," I always picture a person in a gown waiting for the doctor to examine everything (abdominal area, reflexes, etc.). I suppose these pre-employment physicals are more about ROM and drug screening than anything else.

[Crash_Cart]

I once had a crazy two part physical I thought was a little over the top.

The first part is the typical MD checking you over while you wore a patient gown. He just poked in your abdominal areas, looked inside your ears, mouth, head to toe assessment sort of thing. Then raising your arms above your head, checking reflexes, listening to your body parts with a stethoscope etc. while asking a few questions about your general health. So he hands me a piece of paper he signed off and i'm out of there. That's no big deal, and I kind of expected that.

Next part was absolutely ridiculous though. They sent me to a private business that does nothing but physicals for different employers. The staff there are physiotherapists wearing lab coats, holding a clipboard checking off various tick boxes on forms, marking your progress. The place sort of looked like an exercise gym, but with weird looking home made equipment everywhere.

First was some time spent walking on a treadmill. The objective was you had to complete several minutes walking on, while it was set to a certain constant speed. It wasn't going very fast, and perhaps "brisk" would be a good description, but you still had to maintain doing this over a length of time. I am a tall person and I think since I have a long stride, it probably helped a lot to get through it pretty easily.

Next up was a set of home made wooden steps with two sides on it. Walked up and down these forward, and then even backwards in a repeated manner until they told you to stop. I am not exactly sure what they are checking with the walking backwards part, but I suspect it had something to do with the person's inner ear control / balancing themselves?

Next, there was some kind of crazy milk crate loaded with various junk inside. (Heavy books, plates, plastic bottles filled with liquids and other household items.) You had to bend down to pick up, walk around the perimeter of the entire room in a circle twice while carrying it, then squat and set it back down on the floor again. You had to keep repeating this process like an animated robot for several minutes.

Then I was told to stand on my heels and hold this position for as long as I could. I guess everyone is different and the time varies. They just record the amount of time using a stopwatch.

No actual push ups, but they wanted to see you maintain yourself in a push up position with arms extended and locked while they placed some kind of bean bag weight on your back.

Then there was a grocery cart filled with junk but the grocery cart had no wheels on it. It had some kind of metal sleigh skids / skis? attached to it instead.

The idea was to push the grocery cart around the perimeter of the room for several minutes on the carpet which caused a good deal of friction and physical resistance. It was hard to keep it going in a straight line, and you had to struggle with it when making turns. Sometimes you had to actually pick up the cart using the handle to reposition it before pushing it in a straight line again.

Then I had to lay down on an exercise mat while they performed range of motion exercises or something on all my various extremities. At one point they used some kind of large wooden protractor to actually measure the amount of range I could flex everything in numbers of actual degrees. It was all recorded for the physical.

I consider myself to be in pretty good physical shape and I thought some of it was actually hard to do at times. You don't really realize how tiring it can be to pick up and carry a heavy milk crate and setting it back down again for several minutes. It kind of wears you out rather quickly. In the end, I passed the physical but good grief...