RN / NP / PA Certifications

[FireCloud9]

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A number of pre-nursing (and a couple of fresh RNs - w/no job or xp) students are taking other certifications to make themselves more competitive for job openings.

Among those (and sorry in advance for my lack of knowledge in this area):

CNA training
EKG training
EMT training

Someone else mentioned "wound care" cert.

1. Does any of this actually help?
2. What certs do you have and / or recommend?

What certs would be useful for those pursuing a PA? NP? RN?

 

[bradt9881]

BAsic Life support, advanced cardiac life support, pediatric advanced life support, advanced trauma life support are a few....

 

[The right Path]

In trying to gain employment as an RN, just having the certifications alone is not likely to be of much help. Particularly the ECG cert. However, having some significant experience actually working as a CNA or EMT would be helpful in that it demonstrates experience working with patients and would be a great opportunity to build references as well as network with employers that based on your performance as a CNA, tech, etc., would be more likely to hire you on as an RN rather than someone they can really only evaluate on paper and brief interview.

BLS/ACLS/PALS/ATLS, etc.... You should already be BLS certified as a student. All RNs should also be ACLS certified as well, but your employer will send you through that class when you get hired. I don't whether it is of much value in making yourself a more desirable candidate for employment. Who knows? Perhaps it may demonstrate that you show initiative. PALS/ATLS/TNCC are population specific and not worth spending money on if they aren't relevant to your position.

Again with the wound care/ostomy cert.- well it may demonstrate initiative, but I don't know to what degree it will really increase your value. And certain certs (wound/ostomy may even be one of them, I don't really know) require a certain amount of experience working as an RN with a certain population- not something a nursing student or newgrad would be eligible for- but those types of certs are very valuable and helpful in advancing your career.

These are just my thoughts, however, and I've never been involved in the hiring process. Your best source of information are the recruiters that work in HR. Get it straight from the source.

 

[FireCloud9]

The Right Path, thanks for the insight.

bradt, that sounds like the certs a paramedic would have. Any others that are specific to PAs?

I know a few recruiters that switched from IT to Healthcare about 12-18 months back. I'm sure they know as much about healthcare as they did about IT.

If they're anything like IT recruiters, then they'll love certs. makes their job easier. They ask for every cert. under the sun even though they don't know what they stand for.

In the IT world I've seen them ask for certs. that only a handful of well known people hold (Cisco's highest certification for example), for jobs that amount to nothing more than basic routing.