Hi Seeker! I'm a CNA (since ~2 years ago) and I love love love it.

Now, to be fair, I swore to myself that i'd never work in a nursing home (obviously unless i had no other choice) but mainly because of all the horror stories. I also notice that working at a nursing home vs. other places can be very laborious and daunting and I just would rather not. There are many total care patients (i had a 300+ lb. total care patient at one point) in a nursing home and from my "hands on" experience when being trained, if you're not at a good nursing home (there are a few really good ones here that pay super well, are really good to the patients but require a lot of strenuous work) this could be exhausting day in and day out. I know this could come off as lazy, but its not. Its practicing good self care. And I think that if more people would do this then companies would take better care at supplying their CNA's with the proper equipment and necessities needed to care for their patients most efficiently.

So, I decided to seek out my options in other venues.

Now, I work as a patient care tech (generally what its called on most applications even if it has another title) at one of our hospitals in the emergency department. Its awesome. It's not a CNA certified required position, but you do get a pay increase for having the certification (and it makes you more hireable because you already know basic patient care techniques). The hospital I work at has also trained me to do catheters (in my CNA we were taught how but told we would not be allowed to do them), set up cardiac monitors as well as perform EKG's (these roles do not extend to other hospitals though, so if I work at another hospital I would not be "automatically" allowed to do these things and would probably have to show comprehension of the skill). Beyond those, I do the basic care that any CNA would do, and generally, the patients aren't hard to manage. I think that the fact that I can ask a nurse, doctor, coordinator, etc. for help if I needed (because in an ER they are always around) makes me more confident in adequately doing my job.

In regards to the mental health complications, I too suffer from depression, anxiety and low self esteem along with schizotypal pd and others. I can honestly say, that I have not had a bad experience working there in relation to my "condition". I think as far as schizotypal goes, this truly ended up being a good job for me because I work pretty much independantly. We all do. We don't have a boss watching over us twenty four hours a day (she may come out once a shift a few times a week but its not to hover its for other things) and I can choose how much I want to be around my patient outside of doing my job. To be fair though, I do find it emotionally daunting working in the behavioral health area because nurses in the ER don't have an extensive knowledge on mental health as an actual mental health facility would and I tend to abhor how "unsympathetic" or "quick to say someone is showing out" some of the nurses can be. In those instances I walk away and stock. When i'm feeling depressed, theres usually enough other chaos to avoid the focus being on me and it allows me something more powerful to focus on (my patient).

Now don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that working at a hospital is the magic cure, there will be annoying coworkers who gossip (for me, that's a big anxiety trigger) and patients who are simply unhappy with the world and lashing out at everybody (though I tend to get along best with these patients because I can't help but sympathize with them). There's manual labor required (I have had to do chest compressions (alternating of course) for up to two hours on a patient who had cardiac arrested) but I just find that the "general environment" working there is better. I could have just lucked out though, because i've had a nurse manager tell me not to come work at her hospital because of how labor intense and incohesive their environment is.

I agree with Winter that you should check out the different places around you before applying - and I would go as far as to say do not apply somewhere you don't want to simply because "you need the money" - no good can come out of that.

Ps. Sorry this reply is so long. Don't hate me. I hope this helps some though.