The right profession, or just bad examples?

[kamaboko]

I've recently taken a CNA class for the purpose of adding the cert to my application for nursing school. (This had been discussed in a previous thread of mine). Now that I've finished, one thing concerns me about the nursing profession. I've had to work with six nurses to date; all connected in some way to the course. With the exception of one, I found all of them to be impersonal, painfully unimaginative, power hungry, spiteful, and generally unhelpful. (All the things I am not, and all the things I don't like in people). Now I'm not here to start a flame war, but is this what I can expect in terms of coworkers, or is it that CNA instructors tend to be burned out RN's? My experience has seriously caused me to reconsider this profession.

[AnonymousNurse45]

Just like in any other profession, there are people who are extremely talented, there are those who are mediocre, and the few who are just bad at what they do.

My combined CNA experience allowed me to observe probably close to 100 nurses, and I have seen the examples of all 3 categories mentioned above.

Don't be discouraged, look at your experience as a learning opportunity. You would want to be good at what you do. How would you know if you are good if you have nothing to compare yourself to.

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

At my most recent workplace, the CNA instructor was fantastic---enthusiastic about what she was doing and communicated her excitement to her students. My son went through her class a year ago, and he's still working for the same nursing home plus was offered a second job at another one just because he was recommended by this instructor. So no, not all of them are burned-out nurses.....you just happened to be unlucky.

I should mention that sometimes, what may seem to a CNA to be abrupt and impersonal behavior in a nurse is a product of stress, which could be due to almost any situation. I'm probably one of the "nicest" nurses around (or so my aides have always told me), but in an emergency, my speech becomes clipped and I tend to be very direct because at that time, I don't need people to understand why I want something done---I just want them to do it STAT! I will always apologize and explain later, but when I've got a patient who's crashing and the EMTs are on their way, I don't have time to say "Oh, Mary, could you please find Jane and ask her to get me some vital signs on the lady in 303C, she doesn't look too good." :)

And yes, there are those nurses who are bitter and nasty, and they should hang up their stethoscopes and go do something else because it's obvious they don't like nursing. But I don't think the six nurses you've cited as being negative are representative of us as a whole, so please don't judge all of us by them.