Work options w/prerequisites

Schoolrat,

I realize this is actually several months after your post was written, but here goes!

First off - congrats and best wishes for your success!

Pretty much any acute care facility will hire aides depending on their protocols. I work with a CNA/CMA who spent 17 years in a long-term care setting, and now loves working on a hospital floor (critical access hospital, so we do everything from ICU-type cases to ambulatory surgeries). One piece of advice that worked for me was to find a unit that you'd like to work on as a nurse when you graduate and treat the CNA job there as a type of internship. You can tell pretty quickly if you'll want to work there for the next few years or if a different unit is a better fit. Oftentimes, especially in my hospital, nurses will give nursing students opportunities to work on their assessment skills while still working as CNA's. They typically assist in placement of foleys, EKG / cardiac monitor leads, and can observe during sterile procedures (depends on the nurse). If you work with a nurse who enjoys teaching, be warned that the experience of a nurse in the trenches doesn't always reflect how things work in NCLEX-land.