CNA to RN

[cookderosa]

If I may, I'll step in and offer some advice from inside the industry. Background: I've been a nurse for 7 years (LPN for 4 and RN for 3), EMT for 4 years, and I'm currently in an FNP program (graduate next summer).

If your end goal is to become an NP or PA, and you already have a Bachelor's degree, I would recommend going the PA route. PA school is more competitive to get into, but this will be your shortest route to your end goal. Don't worry about not having any patient care experience prior to this. PA school requires a TON of clinical hours (far exceeding NP programs), and you will be prepared to take care of patients just fine, so long as you take your education seriously. I have seen crappy PA's who came from a healthcare background and I've seen great PA's who came from a non-healthcare background. As with anything, what you end up with is proportionate to what you put into it.

You're going to spend one to two years doing pre-req's for PA school. You'll spend at least a year doing pre-req's for RN school (even for an accelerated program). PA school is going to be two years. RN school is going to be two years, maybe a year and a half for an accelerated program -- any program faster than that should be a red flag. You'll come out of PA school having met your goal and making anywhere from 30k to 50k more a year starting out (depending on geography and specialty) than you would with your RN. You'll come out of RN school with another 1.5 to 2 years of school left for NP. This is all assuming you're going to school full-time.

As for clep3705's assertion that accelerated programs are a "bad idea" with "excessively high attrition rates", I can only say that I have absolutely no idea what that information is based on. I performed a brief search on the subject, and only found a couple of references to attrition rates being higher, but nothing that denoted that these rates were "excessive". Nursing programs as a rule have high attrition rates. I suspect that higher attrition rates in these programs is in part due to the fact that every single student in these programs has a Bachelor's degree in another field, and perhaps these students are able to find jobs in their first chosen field while pursuing Nursing as their back-up plan, thus leaving no motive for remaining in the program. The body of knowledge and research on the subject is extremely limited.

Another point to consider while weighing PA vs NP is whether or not you think you will ever want to become an MD or DO. As a PA, you will be better-prepared to apply for MD school, as you will have already satisfied all of the pre-req's. Additionally, there are a handful of PA-to-MD programs out there that will reduce your time in med school, and I suspect that more of these programs will pop up in the coming years. The only NP-to-MD program I've found that cuts out any time in med school is a Caribbean med school, and we don't really want to muddy up this conversation with those schools.

To address your initial question -- whether or not to get your CNA license -- don't bother, unless this is a California-specific requirement. Your CNA experience will not help you in RN school. In my experience, those who had backgrounds as CNA's and MA's in my nursing program seemed very knowledgeable and accelerated for the first couple of months of the program. After the first couple of months, the playing field was leveled considerably.

Good luck in whatever you decide.

Great advice!
I still will argue FOR the CNA....afterall, she thought she wanted to be a journalist too. I'm not condemning, just pointing out that there is nothing to lose with seeing healthcare from the inside before making a career change.