mintygirl

As awesome as CNA is, the day comes when its physically breaking you down. In which case you want the flexibility to change job fields, without going outside your career of the medical field. (Who else has the best flexible hours?) With that said there is nothing wrong with bettering yourself. And in cases of wanting to get into a hospital, if you luck out to get an interview, you can bring up the fact that you have these skills and abilities too. You might not be allowed to use it, but you can mention it and it just looks good. Then let's say you do get the hospital job and your comfy with it, you can always be asked to be cross-trained in other areas and she can place you where you need to be. :)

Why not call the lady who gave you a tour of the place and ask her what happened? Then at the end just thank her for her time, at the very least the next time around you might be reconsidered because things happen or the person they hire finds out they dont want the job, etc.

If you truly felt like the victim of a bully and that the nursing program was out to get you, you should have just left the program vs failing out of clinical. Take time off to address your mental and emotional needs then re-apply to a new one. It would have been the better route to go, the option that an adult would choose. No it wouldn't have been easy and you might have had misgivings about it, but later in life you would have thanked yourself for staying away from a bad program that is essentially supposed to prepare you for your nursing career. Granted this isn't the popular choice because a lot of people like to hear otherwise, to be consoled, but it changes nothing You'll still be in a program that is biased, unfair and discourteous to you. Take it as a learning lesson that no one in life has your back, including your peers and instructors. Essentially the nurse instructors have one job and its not to get you to pass theory or clinical, that's you - that's self study, but rather its to remedy any weakness in your character as a nurse. It's true that often times many nursing students will feel like they are "being attacked" and I've seen nursing instructors respond roughly to nursing students, with said student in return chalking up their inadequacies to race cards, age cards, gender cards. I usually tell them the same thing I'm telling you. It's 50/50. Either they really are bullying you for god knows what petty issue or they aren't and you need to toughen up, speak up, etc etc. Because eventually you'll stand alone and other people will be looking to you for answers, patients will be in your care and you have to be more than just book smart, but compete too. You mentioned mental health to us, but you need to address it. Have you not heard of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs? Its usually the first thing they teach nurses: take care of yourself, otherwise you are not fit to care for others.

Your age is a contributing factor. I know, I know. Many here will stand up and argue, "ageism" until it is in the dirt, but you have to look at the facts. If you are 18-22 then MD it baby. The ugly truth why many PA's dont become MD's is simply time over money. Considering residency for them is anywhere between 7-9 years and x amount of schooling, many MD's graduate at 29-35. With heavy debt. We're talking triple digits here. And you go into the hole deep from the start, "flunking" out isn't an option nor is any other sudden career change. And don't get me started on the MCAT. You pretty much have to spend a whole year after your B.S. to study for this, which will then determine if you even get into med school, let alone a good one. And then guess what? More student loans! Woo. Yeah. So yes, age is a factor for the MD route. The older you are, the later you have to wait to start earning money and having a life. NP's cannot alter between specialties either - despite what people will lead you to believe. You will take pay cuts as its not a one or all sort of experience that caries over. In order to go the PA route, many require "clinical hours" which have been accumulated by those who are EMTS, CNAs, LVNS, RNS or some other open field. They expect you to get your feet wet and from what I can hear in your post, you really are "undecided" as your title says. Your honest to best bet is to ask to "shadow" a MD and find a way to get into a hospital to oversee what people are doing on a day to day basis, to get an understanding if that is something you will like personally.

I don't know if that's reasonable, you need to stop asking others and ask yourself. Hell, you might not even know until after the first week. I don't know about every single state but this is why there is a 90-day probation period which means stuff can happen or you might find out you don't like this job. No harm done. Don't stick around unless its something YOU feel YOU can handle. Ask to shadow another CNA before you start. Places like these LOVE having YOU on the floor because you hold a cert and it makes them look pretty and can charge the residents more while they offer to pay you a dollar less. Essentially the only work you'll be doing different is that you don't give baths but you take a 1$ pay cut because of it.

Unfortunately you're going to find that many facilities are understaffed and that the "shortage" in nursing that people often spew at the mouth isn't because there aren't enough to hire, its that they choose to run at what the state sets as a bare minimum guideline. At the end of the day, this is a company you're working for. The DON and the Supervisor DSD might not necessarily be the ones on the payroll, but typically its owned by some out of state family who own like 30+ facility homes. These people are here to make a profit off health insurance and other people's pain and end of days retirement because god forbid they need help cooking a meal or two. I know in California there is a 3.2 per nurse hour which basically means there should be AT LEAST 3 shifts with a half hour to cover the change over when the other nurses come on, but people forget that's just the minimum which is set extreeeemely low! And the fact that there is no CNA to patient ratio is open grounds for why cna's get abused so much. The "older" cna ones have just gotten use to being treated like garbage and are apathetic to change. They will ALWAYS be hard and uncaring because its all they ever know. What I'm saying is essentially you might run into a lot of facility that are just down right nasty and will throw you under a bus. Oh yes and get this, say if the facility is understaffed and you're assisting a patient and another patient has to wait too long for you and some incident occurs, THEN the state and omnibudsmen get involved, everyone and their MAMA will be pointing the finger at you and say "Well why did you not speak up if you feel you can't provide adequate care or that you felt the residents weren't being cared for properly" and they show you videos those so called abuse videos where a lawyer is on screen running his mouth about how he'll sue you personally... Well its no wonder people dont speak up but just end up leaving. I remember working at one facility where cna's were quitting faster than they could hire them. No one wants to take the blame, its not a cna's fault the place is garbage. At the end of the day you were human, just remember to thank God that you got out of there before something serious happens.

I never understand why people wait until after graduation to find out if there are jobs for ___ field or if there is a x job in ___ (blank) location. The economy is what it is and no amounts of degree or education will save you from being out of work. It also doesn't mean that you won't have to put out leg work for a job either. My mother always taught me that looking for a job is often a full-time job in itself because you exhaust a lot of your resources trying to land one and god help you if the facility is a slum bucket.. Getting your foot in the door is difficult enough but what I found works best is cold calling. You pretty much find a list of every SNF facility in your area and cold call them, ask them if they're hiring and do your best not to sound too young or too inexperienced this way you can get an honest answer out of them. Just call and say "Hey/Hi I was wondering if you guys are hiring for any CNA's?" Don't mention shifts or anything like that. I've had a few places say "Yes we're hiring" or they might say "We're accepting apps" or maybe they'll say "No we're not hiring" but they will accept apps, which is sort of the same thing lol (they just dont want to admit their hiring for a LOT of reasons) then say "Can I come fill out an app today?" And if they'll say "Yes" then you go in. If they turn around and act like they never were the ones on the phone, then you know that's a facility that you don't want to work for because they can't be honest and upfront. Never take rejection to heart or because your not a good enough cna or lacked experience, you'll come to learn the work is all the same everywhere you go. The only thing I can suggest to making yourself more hireable is being open to accept any and all shifts, being on call and just having an open schedule (if you can help it).

Your not the first male nurse so you can relax if that's what your worried about. Nurses in general are not respected, not by doctors, other nurses, families and most of all hardly patients. You'll never really get a thank you except for the exceptional patient from time to time. The lifting thing isn't a surprise, but eventually with age and experience you might not want to do it as much. Letting people rely on you is one thing, but its another to be on the look out for your own back and spine. And if you're the one lifting, be aware that falls and bedsores as well as clots are now your responsibility because you now came in contact with that patient.

My instructor was honest and up front about the line of work (and you might as well do that because down the road..) you'll get students saying how this was not what they expected it to be. The line of work is very demanding not just as a nurse, but on your soul too. These people and the family included is very draining, teach them to document and speak up for themselves because once they get on the floor no one ever will tell them that. Too often people put blinders on what it means to be a nurse and talk about the glamour, but its time to open up the blinds and let them know that A) its hard laborious grunt work of nursing B) you never really get to do anything fun, its just butt wiping job C) Hospitals, LTCS, HH and SNFS are not your friends, they will fry you for being "too nice" Just scrim through the horror stories of this board. These places are designed to make money and your honesty can cost you your career. They need to remind themselves to look out for #1 which is their future, license and career, then patients, then lastly hospital.

Its never to late to stop becoming a back breaking cna and to land on the floor as an RN. Why would you ever let what people think of you to stop you from getting out of a hard back breaking job? Come on now we're in 2014 where we can do whatever we want at any age, stop letting ageism get to you.

No you did not ruin your career, people forget that CNA is a certification and that LVN is your license. Even if you were fired for god knows what, most of the time you don't need to show it or report it because it doesn't apply to a license.

Truth is, when it comes times for clinics make sure you protect yourself when you are practicing your skills on female pt's, especially peri-care. Don't be left alone with a resident and if you have to, just have your instructor present when you perform it. You have a lot of liars and jealousy in the nursing program, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone came back who didn't like you and said you did some questionable things.

Well that's nobody's fault but your own, next time in the future hopefully you'll do research before you join and complete a program, only to find out how much you really make upon exiting the program. That's like finishing school as a nurse, only to discover you don't get paid as much as a doctor.

It really wasn't all that long ago when they trained from the hospital on the theory and clinical though and that's primarily how a lot of old RN's started out and learned from other RN. So if you work as a CNA in a hospital, in the past or had been for awhile there was a lot to learn and you could learn granted by simply being employed there. In fact if you wanted to get your license as a nurse from a CNA, you used to be able to simply take the pharmacology portion and challenge the board and if approved, take the NCLEX. And the same was true for LVNs to RN, but the hospital provided a year of clinics. And that was because in the past, CNA's roles were less defined, they passed meds and drew blood with the right certificates. So essentially CNA's who worked in oncology, surgical and other units did pretty much have the majority of their clinics proportion out of the way and if they were lucky enough to be in a training hospital like UCLA. But by today's standards and how overcrowded the pool is, most CNA's going in don't have what older CNA's might have had the fortune of having, hospital experience. And I mean a good hospital, the kind you were proud to stay in. A brand new nurse who just obtained her CNA isn't a step away from being an RN, but if she was all that dangerous the job wouldn't hire her, the DON would approve of her. And that isn't really your judgement call, you just mandate appropriate task to a cna as you would an lvn and as long as its within their scope of practice. Which is what all schools teach and the laws are more clearly defined. I don't really know where the fear of a CNA is coming from, I haven't ever heard a CNA say "Well I'm one step away from an RN so I'm going to inject medicine the RN left behind."

Keep applying for SNF/LTC as they are the ones most likely to take new grads with zero experience. You're allowed to apply every 90 days and it typically helps to apply to the place you interned at. The reason I say SNF is that some of them are sub-acute (which you wont find out which ones are until your actually on the job, typically) but hospitals do like some sub-acute experience vs no acute exp. Everyone and I mean everyone's mom, brother, sister and kitty cat want to get into a hospital so you're competing against everyone. PCT jobs don't require exp, typically but they do require a CNA license - which puts you in the same field of everyone with a CNA applying for said job with exp. So that's why you're probably not getting a call back from hospitals and typically they prefer PCA/PCT to be 1 year into an RN program too.