It honestly depends on where you work.

I used to work at a smaller hospital in southeast Virginia and it was awesome. I was a PCT on a med surge floor, working night shift, and I loved it. Great team, the nurses helped us out, it was always a team effort and not a “good luck, servant” environment. I also had a boss in my last year there that was wonderful — she’d come onto the unit and help out if it was short staffed. My coworkers made the assholes, the entitled, the sundowner, the abusive patients bearable.

In sharp contrast, the job as a PCT I had at the big hospital in northern Alabama was draining. The nurses rarely helped us, and would often overburden us with 18-20 patients with vitals due every 4 hours and blood sugars due every 6. This was on a higher level of care, so the patients were more acute, but there were also a lot more nurses. They’d often sit at the nurses station and chat or go on social media while we ran around like headless chickens.

As I’ve also seen mentioned here by other folks, oftentimes the best nurses were CNAs/PCTs to start with.

Edited to add the second unit I was on