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I am currently a year and a half away from PA school and since I just made the decision that I want to go to PA school I need to start accruing patient care hours. Initially I applied to a CNA program where I will work in a nursing home. The program is 3 and a half weeks Mon-Fri for 8 hours a day. I do get paid to take the class though. After talking to a friend who is currently applying to PA school and has been a CNA in a nursing home for a year I was told that this may not be enough. Being a CNA in a nursing home may not get me the experience I need for professional PA school. I really want to work in a doctors office or hospital for my patient care hours. I found a program for Phlebotomy that overlaps the CNA course this summer. Its $2000 to take it, 2 days a week for a month for 6 1/2 hours each class. Its followed by a month long internship before the certification exam. I don't know anyone who has done Phlebotomy as their Patient Care Hours and I'm not sure that this is a better option. Will being a Phlebotomist get me into a hospital/doctors office? Is it worth the $2000? Will it give me a better chance at getting into PA school? Are there opportunities to work part time as a phlebotomist since I am still a student? 

 

Ultimately I would love to be a dual CNA/phlebotomist but since the 2 classes overlap by 30 minutes each day I'm not sure I would be able to take them together. And maybe that would be too much at one time. 

 

Any recommendations would be fantastic and I would love to hear if Phlebotomy is a better option for Patient care hours. 

 

Thank you! 

Tori 

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Depending on the state you're in, you don't need a phlebotomy course.  A lot of hospitals/clinics will do on the job training.  You certainly don't need an internship (unless your state requires it to work).  Do a job search before you commit to paying $2k to learn something you can potentially learn on the job.

 

I had phlebotomy as my PCE and I think CNA would be better.  I actually got certified as a CNA but couldn't find a job that worked around my FT job to get hours and just based on the training I think CNA would have been more involved PCE than phleb.

 

Plenty of people get into school with CNA as their HCE.  Phleb, too, it just doesn't seem as common.

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As someone currently in the last days of a two month CNA course (for which I paid $1,000), I would say it is a good course to take. I think it's a good general intro to touching patients and doing basic procedures (e.g. taking blood pressure, range of motion exercises, measuring and recording intake and output, etc.)... However, I've done roughly 80 hours as an aide thus far and can say that after the first few days, you've seen the majority of what you can possibly see (and other aides can vouch for this). Once you've changed a few bedpans, you've changed them all. The point of hce is to make you comfortable with touching and communicating with patients prior to your first clinical experience in PA school. As a CNA, you WILL become used to this. If you can manage the phlebotomy class, it might open more doors and allow you to find a job that involves doing more than giving bed baths and doing feedings day in and day out. For me, I've been working as a private caregiver for months and have learned more and gotten more satisfaction from the work, because I have greater responsibility than I've encountered as a nursing home aide. Either way, CNA is go-to experience for many prospective students, and it teaches you the value of kindness and empathy above all else.

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I wouldn't pay 2k for the phlebotomy class, I would pursue other HCE options like EMT which would probably be cheaper and provide better HCE. Or, many hospitals do not require you to be certified to be an aide there and you would be doing more in a hospital setting versus nursing home (and save money from taking CNA course). Another option is being a ER tech, which may require EMT or CNA license, however, many jobs do on the job training if you do not have certification.

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Not worth $2000 for a CNA course imo. The training itself doesn't warrant that much money.

 

My EMT-B class was 1.2K and it was the best $1.2K I spent. Use that license to get my current MA job where I got on the job training for every single thing (phleb, injections, med admin, neb tx, pulmonary function testing...etc). 

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A 2000 CNA course is 100% not worth it. Which state do you live in? My state allows people to "challenge" the CNA course which just involved learning basic nursing skills from youtube (search for 4yourcna) and applying for a license through prometric. I learned the skills, registered to take the exam at a testing center and got licensed in one day. Super easy. I found a job in a hospital. I would look for "teaching" hospitals around the area because they get a lot of nursing students who work as techs and leave the tech positions frequently to become RNs.

 

2000 is not worth it. CNA work is not in any remote sense difficult to learn and it's very much on the job training. Phleb is good too but its less contact with patients.

 

Best of luck.

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