Becoming a registered nurse (RN) or a licensed practical nurse (LPN) is a long, rigorous, and often expensive process. While nursing school curricula cover clinical theory and advanced skill training, they lack one element: the raw reality of working directly with patients. This is where the Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) role becomes vital.
CNA work bridges academic theory and clinical reality and provides practical skills, emotional readiness, and knowledge of care systems. For serious aspiring nurses, the CNA role can be an excellent stepping stone to other nursing careers.
In this article:
- Practical Experience Advantage
- Academic and Career Benefits
- Challenges and Limitations
- Conclusion (The Verdict)
- References
Practical Experience Advantage
Being a CNA means spending most of your shift at the patient’s bedside, along with tasks like patient transport, stocking, and documentation. This hands-on experience translates into major advantages in nursing school and throughout your career.
Mastering Essential Clinical Skills
CNA work focuses on Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), which are the central building blocks of patient care.
- Fundamental Care Proficiency: CNAs are essential to the daily care of patients, which includes feeding, bathing, turning, and toileting. The ability to perform these tasks safely is paramount. While these may seem like mundane duties, they remain an integral part of the nurse’s scope of practice, alongside other more critical responsibilities.
- Vitals and Observation: CNAs are often delegated the task of accurately obtaining and documenting vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, respiration, and oxygen saturation). This consistent practice develops your ability to recognize subtle changes in a patient’s baseline, which is an important skill for identifying deterioration before it becomes a crisis.
- Body Mechanics and Safety: Learning safe patient transfers and positioning is a physically demanding task. CNAs learn proper body mechanics and safety protocols, which reduce the risk of injury for both the patient and themselves and a skill that many new nurses without prior experience struggle with.
CNAs may also gain experience in other skills, such as:
- Documenting intake and output
- Using gait belts, patient lifts, and other equipment
- Catheter care and maintenance
- Simple wound care
- Utilizing PPE (personal protective equipment) and implementing infection precautions
- Obtaining urine, stool, or sputum specimens
- Measuring bedside glucose levels
Note: The ability to perform these tasks is dependent on the CNA’s specific training and state and facility policies.
Gaining System Exposure
Beyond the bedside, CNA work is a crash course in the function of the modern healthcare system.
- Understanding the Environment: You quickly learn the pace, policies, and chaotic realities of hospitals or long-term care facilities. You learn to navigate complex organizational structures, adapt to change, prioritize, and manage your time effectively, which are essential soft skills for success.
- Interdisciplinary Teamwork: You work closely with nurses, doctors, physical therapists, and other members of the healthcare team. This exposure teaches you how to effectively communicate and advocate for your patients, rather than just learning about it in a textbook.
- Documentation: Even with a limited scope of practice, CNAs gain familiarity with Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and the importance of timely and accurate documentation.
Academic and Career Benefits
The path to higher nursing roles starts with successfully navigating the CNA certification process, including the CNA exam. Once certified, this experience provides tangible benefits that enhance nursing school applications and improve financial stability. It’s also worth noting that the CNA license is often transferable, allowing professionals to seek reciprocity when moving to a new state. Furthermore, this experience can also lead to specialized CNA roles, such as geriatric, psychiatric, or wound care, which will increase your marketability and skills.
Career Confirmation and Networking
One of the most significant benefits of the CNA role is that it allows you to test the waters before committing to the financial and time burden of a multi-year degree. If you discover that the physical or emotional demands of direct patient care are not for you, you’ve saved yourself significant money and time.
Your role as a CNA is a powerful networking tool. You build relationships with colleagues, nurses, and managers who can act as mentors, write strong letters of recommendation for nursing school, and potentially hire you later on.
Nursing School Success
Nursing school is highly competitive, and having real-world clinical experience can provide a competitive advantage. Admissions committees view hands-on experience as a sign of commitment and preparedness.
Once enrolled, your clinical experience can make nursing school easier. Theoretical concepts taught in the classroom (like anatomy, infection control, or fluid balance) immediately make sense when you can connect them back to the patients you care for.
Financial Support
CNA work can provide a stable, flexible income that fits a student’s schedule. Many facilities offer shifts at night and on weekends. Beyond the paycheck, working as a CNA often includes subsidized education. Many hospital systems and employers offer tuition reimbursement or scholarships for CNAs pursuing LPN or RN degrees, which can reduce the need for student loans.
Challenges and Limitations
The CNA role comes with challenges, and CNA experience alone does not provide complete professional preparation.
Physical and Emotional Burnout
Working as a CNA can be stressful. High patient-to-staff ratios often lead to physical and emotional burnout. Unlike other entry-level healthcare roles, such as Medical Assistant (MA), the CNA role requires heavy lifting and lots of movement at the bedside. CNAs have to practice strong self-care and set boundaries to ensure the job doesn’t completely exhaust them before they even begin nursing school.
The Scope Gap
The most critical limitation is the scope gap. The CNA role focuses on fundamental physical care, whereas the LPN and, especially, the RN roles require complex clinical judgment, critical thinking, and assessment skills. RNs make medical decisions, administer medications, and develop the plan of care, which are aspects that the CNA experience does not cover. CNA experience does not prepare you for the advanced clinical reasoning or care management of licensed nursing.
While the experience is highly valuable, CNA certification usually does not translate to direct academic credit and does not shorten the time required for traditional LPN or RN programs. Complacency is another risk. A steady paycheck and a set routine can delay the pursuit of further and more demanding education.
Conclusion (The Verdict)
The question shouldn’t be whether the CNA role is a good stepping stone to becoming an RN or LPN. It’s whether you can afford not to take it. Becoming a CNA is an entry-level role that affords invaluable experience, significantly boosting an individual’s success in nursing school and their long-term career.
While it is not a required academic hurdle, the CNA position prepares you for the grueling endeavor that is nursing school. Despite the limited scope of the CNA, your medical experience will prove worthwhile in helping you master educational and clinical competencies throughout the nursing program and into your professional career.
References
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Standard Precautions for All Patient Care. Accessed October 2025. https://www.cdc.gov/infection-control/hcp/basics/standard-precautions.html
- National Council of State Boards of Nursing. Delegation. Accessed October 2025. https://www.ncsbn.org/nursing-regulation/practice/delegation.page
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). About Safe Patient Handling and Mobility. Accessed October 2025. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/healthcare/prevention/sphm.html
- Texas Health and Human Services. Texas Curriculum for Nurse Aides in Long-Term Care Facilities. Accessed October 2025. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/licensing-credentialing-regulation/nurse-aide/cna.pdf
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nursing Assistants and Orderlies. Accessed October 2025. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/nursing-assistants.htm
