When you have the ambition of working in the fields of medical care, naturally you need to follow a good education. A very good position to start from is as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) after completing an education at a CNA School. As a CNA you will be the one taking care of the patients on their bedside, doing your absolute best providing them with personal care they need on a daily basis. You will be supervised by a nurse or physician on staff and you will update them with regular reports on the patient’s situation.
Your activities will be very basic but much needed. Getting into a CNA School is not very difficult. They require you to have a high school diploma or a GED and most of them require the students to pass a physical test, to take (and pass) a drug test en to have a current immunization. They also do a full criminal background check. There are a lot of various CNA School programs available in a lot of different settings. This can be at the local medical facilities, community colleges or local trade schools.
The regulations required for a good CNA School program depend on state regulations and future place of employment. These regulations are very different from state to state and from program to program. There is a federal exam to take in order to become a CNA. This exam covers the grounds of 21 competencies which are laid out in a federal law. The areas covered by this exam are the ones a CNA needs to know everything about, such as keeping a healthy environment, reading and recording vital signs, emergency procedures and how to transfer a patient in a safely way. Most of the CNA School programs are made to prepare the students for the federal exam.
Although there is a lot of difference in the regulations and requirements, CNA School programs also have a lot in common. Programs often are divided in a theoretical part and a practical part. The theoretical part teaches students the textbook materials such as an introduction to healthcare, anatomy, physiology, psychology, healthy nutrition and dealing with infection control. The practical part teaches the students how to assist their patients in their daily activities, such as assisting patients to take their meals, how to get a patient safely in and out of bed and how to bath and groom a patient. Most CNA School programs provide classroom courses for the theoretical part and the practical part usually takes place in a hospital, long-term care facilities or in different home health settings.
Before you make any decision on which program to follow, you might have to make clear for yourself what ambitions you have, what you expect of a CNA School program and which requirements and regulations apply to your situation. There are short term programs who offer theoretical courses for those who already have the hands-on experience and can be prepared for the exam in about 4 weeks. For those who have no experience at all there are the long term programs which take about 12 weeks and are expanded with the practical parts of the program.
When deciding on which program to choose, you might want to take a good look at tuition. Tuition can be somewhere from a couple of hundred dollars up to $ 1,000. Not only can there be a difference in dollars, but also in the certificates you will be getting at the end of the journey. The more expensive programs often have additional certificate next to the federal certificate such as First Aid, CPR, BBP (blood borne pathogens) or HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability). The less expensive programs only prepare for the federal exam, but require students to already be in possession of the additional certificates in order to even take the federal exam.
After passing the exam, you will have the honor of being registered in the state’s Nurse Aid Registry and you are ready to launch your carreer in the fields of medical expertise, which is a very growing occupation with a lot of options.
