A CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) is a trained health care professional who works closely under the supervision of an RN (Registered Nurse) in a hospitals, adult day health centers, nursing homes, or even personal homes.

Certified Nursing Assistants, in general, take care of the most basic health care needs of the patients.  Since nurse assistants have regular daily contact with the patients, they are the ones who provide vital information about the condition of patients to the registered nurse.  CNAs are considered as eyes and ears of the nurses.  Thus, a career of a certified nursing assistant can be challenging, satisfying and rewarding in many ways.

There are many benefits of starting out your career as a Certified Nursing Assistant or CNA.  The first advantage is that you can become a CNA in fairly short amount of time.  Depending upon the CNA program, it may take just only four to six weeks to complete the CNA course requirements and the examinations; and you could be earning more than minimum wages as a Certified Nursing Assistant, in as little as eight weeks.

There are plenty of CNA jobs available, even during this phase of economic recession.  So if you become a CAN, your skills will be in high demand. There are roughly 1.8 million nursing assistants employed in the United States.  CNAs are recruited in a variety of health care facilities including hospitals, clinics, and homes for the aged.  The employee turnover in CNA profession is huge as many CNAs usually pursue advanced training to be come a Registered Nurse.  Thus, there is clearly a high growth rate for Certified Nursing Assistants.

As a CNA, you will not only earn more than minimum wages, but you may also advance your career to registered nursing career.  In other words, nurses are in demand, and it is a great time to pursue a career in nursing,  should it be a good fit for your personality.  To some people, being a Nursing Assistant is ‘just a job’ to pay the bills and nothing more.  These people have made a wrong choice in selecting the nursing career.  It is the patients who will suffer because of wrong career choice of such nursing assistants.  So before making the choice to enter this profession, one has to understand the duties of a CNA and should also realize that

• CNAs may have to do hard manual work such as lifting and transferring patients on a regular basis.
• The pay rates for CNA jobs may be lower than other health care jobs.
• CNAs must work in shifts, on week-ends, and holidays, which may interfere with personal life.

If you derive satisfaction taking care of others, love to be present with patients and families, love the challenges of being reponsible to others, and if you are willing to work in shits and not shun from physical work, then nursing assistant may be the right choice of career for you.

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