Should I or shouldn't I

I can't speak from experience, I worked just before nursing school but with 4 active kids and nursing school I knew I couldn't keep up the pace with everything competing for my attention. But I can say that there is a handful of people in our class who work as pct or cna during school and I think it helps them be more comfortable in the clinical setting. It also gives them exposure outside of clinical to different things. A lot of them have been able to observe things like IV starts and get hints from the nurses on the floor since they know they are in school for nursing. I think this gives them a head start as well. Honestly I wish I had the time to work, in the end I think it is beneficial if you can manage your time. Good luck with your decision!

I got my CNA cert after first semester of NS. Got three interview requests within an hour of applying for jobs with a major hospital/LTC employer in my area. I have been working as a CNA in LTC for a couple months now, and I can say, it is hard, hard work. It's the hardest physical work I have ever done (and that includes when I worked on a horse farm years ago!) I don't know that it will give me any leg up once I start applying for nursing jobs, other than I will then be an "internal applicant". It does, however, train you to be efficient, manage time, prioritize, and you become extremely adept at bed changes, brief changes, feeding, etc. It is sometimes hard not to "think like a nurse" as you've been taught in school and clinical. I have ascertained that CNAs are vastly underpaid and underappreciated. As for working and school, I am part time, so I have managed (so far). I know for a fact that I couldn't work full time in NS. The facility where I work does work with my school schedule, thankfully. Because school has to come first.

Yes! It's a great way to get some hospital experience, get your foot in the door, and get to see some stuff. The students with PCT jobs in our group were way quicker/progressed faster in clinicals than the rest of us the first few semesters. Plus, every student I know who had a PCT job were offered positions at their hospitals after graduation (myself included), some even on the same unit they worked on before.

Whether the PCT job helps you down the road will depend on how well you network. I went for a PCT job interview recently and the nurse manager who interviewed me mentioned that she has promoted some pct's to floor nurses. In my head I said yes! I was offered the job :). I would say go for it.

One caveat, if you have not yet started the program, and you can afford to, I would wait until second quarter/ semester before getting a job, especially since you have kids. In my program, people who worked first quarter struggled in keeping up. Only one person in our program who has kids worked also, and it was very part time (and she had plenty of husband support). Depends on your school I guess, but first quarter at ours was brutal in comparison with second (semi-brutal) and 3rd where I am now (not too bad really).