How much does a CNA certified nurses assistant make in a job/ and what do they do exactly?

michr

'Mrs.Myers' offered an excellent answer this is extremely hard, under appreciated and underpaid work. there is not a more rewarding job to be had or a more important one.

another way to look at what she tried to explain is this:
think about caring for children 6 to 10 of them at a time,
they are from 3 months to 5 years old
and instead of weighing 10 to 50 pounds each they weight 100 to 300+ pounds each. you will never work so hard in any job in your life.....

but also think about learning about history from those who actually lived it, about being loved unconditionally, about reading to and crying with a dear friend and at times having to attend their funeral.

RomeyM

That totally depends on what state you live in and where you work. I live in Oklahoma and worked as a CNA while I was going to nursing school and my daughter is doing the exact thing now and is in nursing school. She signed up with a nursing agency that pays anywhere from $13.50 per hour to $16.00 again, depending on where they send you, and it is not steady work, a lot of times if she accepts a shift they will cancel it and you cant always get a shift when you want one. She also works weekend doubles at a nursing home and they pay her $10.00 per hour with weekend baylor which means she works 16 hours on Saturday then another 16 on Sunday and they pay her for 40. I do know of some nursing homes around this area that pay as little as $7.50 per hour. You could also go to work at a hospital and usually they start you out at a base pay, around here that is usually around $9.50 per hour and then 2% extra for each year of experience you have, and most hospitals have good staffing and you are not overwhelmed with work, usually they just assign you 5-7 patients to tend to.

Now this is the bad news. The work is rewarding but the pay is terrible for the job because it is hard on the body. You do everything from lifting patients, to bathing them, dressing them, feeding them, wiping their fannies, changing their diapers, dumping their bedpans, walking them, turning them every 2 hours, answering call lights, making beds, constantly redirecting the ones who have Alzheimers or dementia, laundry and any other thing the residents or patients need. Then to top it all off most nurses from my experience are very lax about helping you, as a matter of fact when I was working as a CNA the nurses did very little but sit at the nurses station and eat popcorn and visit while call lights were ringing and we were usually down at least one aid which was very annoying to me, especially since I was making peanuts and they were drawing in about $25.00 an hour. Now that I am a nurse I always help my aids and I expect the nurses on my shift to do the same.

I hope I didn't completely scare you away from the job because like I said it is rewarding. If you are going to work as a CNA just be sure you find a good facility (preferably a hospital) and some good supportive nurses to work with and you will be fine.

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