What type of equipment would I be dealing with in the medical field

Hi Rosheana,

It is great that you are invested to know about the medical field. You are on your way to being prepare to become a CNA. Although, I am not a CNA but I had the opportunity to work as a Social Worker at a nursing home where I worked with nurses, CNAs, rehab therapists, medical doctors and dietitians at the nursing home. Based on my observation, I saw CNAs using thermometers to check the patient's temperature; weight machine to weigh each patient; protective gear; a hoyer lift to help patients transfer from the bed to wheelchair; a transfer belt to help patients ambulate; bedpan to help patient with tolieting; laundry basket; first aid kit and shower seat/bed to bath and shower patients; commode to help patient use it at bedside. CNAs may use other tools as well.

For further information on the tools that CNAs use, you can go to this website below:

https://www.cnalicense.org/blog/the-6-most-essential-tools-for-cnas.html

Wow -- talk about a wide-open answer! I first need to preface this answer with a general observation and a question about what your first thoughts are. Do you think that medicine is limited to what any particular doctor does each day? Or just to what happens in the hospital or doctor's office? Of course not. For all the scalpels and hospital beds and CAT scanners and such, there are thousands and thousands of people working on all the equipment that goes into things you may take for granted, like the wiring in a hospital room that has to be certified for medical use, to the gowns the personnel use, to delivering supplies like oxygen. Or even designing and building medical facilities that need to be also certified and maintained. These are all medical fields.

It's very heartening to know how much flexibility you'll have in dealing with so many aspects of medical treatment and patient care and all the things that go to support those activities. You could be maintaining the supply stream for a hospital or clinic or be a bioengineer and design new machines for use in a medical setting. Or be one of the many people who provide personal medical devices. Or treat hearing disabilities, or be one of the many, many technicians that doctors and nurses and other medical personnel depend on to support those essential and critical activities and devices.

The human body -- and I extend this to all animals, because veterinarians have a tremendous amount of training to do their job as well -- is very, very complex. And because of Parkinson's Law (read up on it-- cool!), it gets just as complex as it possibly can to address whatever problems medical folks need to solve. In fact, I would say that at least half of the entire population is involved in addressing -- either directly or indirectly -- some aspect of medicine or health. Next time you pick up a hamburger, realize that somewhere alone the chain, there was a medical professional evaluating some part of providing that burger to you. Cool, huh?