{"id":97548,"date":"2025-12-04T10:35:53","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=97548"},"modified":"2025-12-04T10:36:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:36:23","slug":"caring-for-patients-for-26-years-and-still-not-a-nurse-connolly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2025\/12\/04\/caring-for-patients-for-26-years-and-still-not-a-nurse-connolly\/","title":{"rendered":"Caring for Patients for 26 Years\u2014and Still Not a Nurse [Connolly]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caring for Patients for 26 Years\u2014and Still Not a Nurse<\/strong><\/a> — from workshift.org\/ by Colleen Connolly<\/p>\n

Arnett\u2019s experience spending decades in a job she intended as a first step is common among CNAs, medical assistants, and other entry-level healthcare workers,\u00a0many of them\u00a0women of color from low-income backgrounds. Amid a nationwide nursing shortage,\u00a0elevating those workers seems like an obvious solution, but the path from CNA to nurse isn\u2019t so much a ladder as it is a huge leap.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And obstacle after obstacle is strewn in the way. The high cost of nursing school, lengthy prerequisite requirements, rigid schedules, and unpaid clinical hours make it difficult for many CNAs to advance in their careers, despite their willingness and ability and the dire need of healthcare facilities.<\/p>\n

While there are no national statistics about the number of entry-level healthcare workers who move on to higher-paid positions,\u00a0a study\u00a0of federal grants for CNA training showed that only 3% of those who completed the training went on to pursue further education to become an LPN or RN. Only 1% obtained an associate degree or above. A similar\u00a0study in California\u00a0showed that 22% of people who completed CNA certificate programs at community colleges went on to get a higher-level educational credential in health, but only 13% became registered nurses within six years.<\/p>\n

That reality perpetuates chronic shortages in nursing, and it also\u00a0keeps hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers locked below a living wage<\/strong>, often for decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caring for Patients for 26 Years\u2014and Still Not a Nurse — from workshift.org\/ by Colleen Connolly Arnett\u2019s experience spending decades in a job she intended as a first step is common among CNAs, medical assistants, and other entry-level healthcare workers,\u00a0many of them\u00a0women of color from low-income backgrounds. Amid a nationwide nursing shortage,\u00a0elevating those workers seems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[374,867,174,115,302,57,823,324,159,71,150,359,3,419,149,102,7,838,79,325,480,293,66,212,50,145,321,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adult-learning","category-apprenticeships","category-career-development","category-colleges","category-community-colleges","category-cost-of-getting-a-degree","category-credentialing","category-curriculum","category-dangers-of-the-status-quo","category-faculty-staff","category-formal-learning","category-health","category-higher-education","category-ideas-teaching","category-informal-learning","category-learning","category-learning-ecosystem","category-learning-experience-design","category-liberal-arts","category-nursing","category-society","category-sociology","category-student-related","category-surviving","category-teaching-learning","category-traditional-tradition","category-united-states","category-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97549,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97548\/revisions\/97549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}