CNA Training & Certification

You’ve taken your CNA training classes and now you are ready to take the certification exam, or are you? You know the information like the back of your hand and you can still hear your CNA training instructor repeating the vital parts you’ll need to remember, but you’re still nervous. Here’s a few CNA training tips that will help you pass the exam, and calm your anxiety up until the big day.

From CNA Training to CNA Exam – What to Expect

According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, there isn’t a practice exam available for certification after your CNA training. However, you should be well prepared if you review the material you’ve learned in your CNA training classes. When you enter the exam, you will have the option to complete the quiz portion of the exam on paper, by computer or orally. If you feel more comfortable taking the exam in Spanish, that is also available.

After the written portion of the exam, you’ll also have a practical portion where you will be required to demonstrate two skills the examiner will select.

Tips for Passing the CNA Training Exam

For some, taking the written test is a bit easier than the practical portion because you don’t have someone standing over you following your every move. While the examiner understands that you’re nervous, he won’t let too many errors slide.

Many people draw a blank during the practical portion, forgetting the steps they learned in their CNA training. For this reason, we highly urge you to practice the practical skills with a partner, while going through the steps in your CNA training manual. The key is for each skill to come naturally without having to think about the steps.

 Tip #1: Wash Your Hands Correctly

Again, follow the steps from your CNA training classes. Remember to bring down some paper towels from the holders before you begin. Turn on the water, use plenty of soap and wash every part of your hand and up to your wrist. Make sure you scrub for at least 20 seconds and then rinse thoroughly. Grab the paper towel you have hanging to dry your hands. Take your used paper towel to turn off the faucet.

If you have acrylic nails, make sure you have them removed before your CNA training exam. If you have long fingernails, be sure to trim them short.

Tip #2: Privacy Is Priority

Whenever you enter a patient’s room, be sure to knock beforehand. If you are working on a patient behind a curtain, always close the curtain when you approach him and then close it when you leave. If you don’t have a physical door or curtain to close, simply telling the examiner what you will do is sufficient.

Tip #3: Safety Is Important Read the rest of this entry »

Employment After CNA Training

Now that you’ve completed your CNA training, are you ready to get to work? While you may be anxious, it may be a little while longer before you actually land your new job.

Why? Here’s a little inside information. Finding a job after CNA training is much easier during certain times of the year.

If you understand the time of year that has the highest rates of CNA hiring  you’ll save yourself effort and boost your confidence when you’re able to find a new job quickly.

Time of Year CNA Training Graduates Find Jobs

If you finish your CNA training after the fall semester, take a deep sigh of relief because the winter season is one of the best times to find work. You’ll find hospitals, assisted living facilities and home care services scurry to find available CNAs.

Reasons for Rise in CNA Employment

• Increased Illness in Patients – The winter increases the rate of illness. This causes hospitals to flood with sick people. Assisted living facilities become busy as the current workers must pick up pace to take care of ill residents. Home care service agencies also seek CNAs to help in the increase in case load needs.

• Staff Illness – Hospital patients, assisted living residents and home care service receivers aren’t the only ones who become ill – staff does too. This means that these work settings suddenly find themselves short on care providers. To take the place of sick staff, CNA are employed at higher rates after CNA training.

• Holiday season – The winter is holiday season, so staff desire vacation time to be with their family. They also need a break from all of the busyness of dealing with sick patients and residents. For this reason, CNA training graduates are employed to fill in empty slots wherever needed.

Summer Employment After CNA Training Read the rest of this entry »

After CNA Training: Employment Success

You’ve finished your CNA training and now you’re working in the job that you’ve wanted to work in for a long time. The only thing is that you’re swamped with a caseload that makes you run constantly from one client to the next.

There’s good news on the horizon for you. After CNA training, you have yet to figure out how to handle the huge list of clients you’ve been given and that is completely normal. No one expects you to know it all after CNA training. Don’t worry, before you know it, you’ll have your caseload under control so much that you’ll be able to finally take the breath you so desperately need.

5 Short Cuts for CNA Training Graduates

•  Short Cut #1: Know What You Can Handle Daily

If your caseload has 30 people and you can only see 5 people a day, it may be time to touch base with your supervisor. It’s important that you are providing quality care and if you can’t do that with the amount of people you have it’s wise to voice your concern.

•  Short Cut #2: Cut Time with Chatty Patients

Of course you are thrilled to have patients after CNA training, but you can only spend so much time with each. While you may have enjoyed providing the extra attention, it’s important that you also give your other clients the attention they need.

•  Short Cut #3: De-Stress with Other CNA Training Graduates

Finding a fellow CNA training graduate to come with you on client visits can be a great stress reliever. You can both see your clients and be there for one another to help. You’ll find that bonding with someone in between clients will make your CNA duties much more pleasurable and help you de-stress. Read the rest of this entry »

Will You Make It Financially After CNA Training

Are you thinking of starting CNA training so you can be a nursing assistant? Well, before you make that step towards CNA training, it’s important that you know what you are getting yourself into. While being a CNA is a rewarding career, it may not be all that’s cracked up to be.

The CNA Training Leads to Low Salary: Worth the Reward?

While becoming a CNA may sound like something that will allow you to give back to those who are less fortunate than you, it can have its drawbacks.

If you’re looking for a career that pays after CNA training, this career is not it. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, most people working in the field after CNA training earn between $10.00 and $15.63 an hour. If you work 40 hours a week at $12.00 an hour, you would make approximately $480 a week. That is $1920 per month before taxes are taken out. If you take this monthly gross income and multiple it by 12, you have a salary of approximately $23,040. Again, this is before taxes.

According to the Federal Government, the poverty line for a family of 3 is $18,530 and a family of 4 is $22,350 gross yearly income. Monthly gross income for a family of 3 is $1,544 and a family of 4 is $1,863.

As you can see, working as a CNA pays you just above the poverty line, which could cause many financial difficulties.

The Repercussions of CNAs’ Wages Read the rest of this entry »

Ready for Your New Job After CNA Training?

You’re a CNA training graduate and you’re ready to find a job. While this sounds simple enough, it’s not that easy. It can be difficult to find companies looking to fill this position, especially when they don’t advertise.  While the job market for CNAs may not look promising after finishing your CNA courses, there is hope.

Using a job placement service can be a gold mine of CNA positions. They specialize in finding some of the best CNAs available for companies. They also work with new CNA training graduates to find them their first jobs to gain that valuable experience they need.

How Companies Seek CNA Training Graduates Through Job Placement Services

When companies want to find quality CNAs, they seek job placement services. It’s an easy way to find the CNA training graduates, eager for employment and with the skills they need for their clients.

Companies contact the job placement services seeking out of work CNAs or CNA training graduates. They will provide a list of skills they expect a nursing assistant to have and then leave it up to the staff to find them.

In a couple of days, the company receives the number of nursing assistants they asked for and everyone is happy. The company has the workers it needs, the nursing assistants have the jobs they desire and the job placement service has done its duty.

A CNA Training Graduate’s Experience Read the rest of this entry »

CNA Training & Scams

Are you interested in CNA training online? Or do you want some help finding a job? While the Internet is a great resource for online classes and job placement, it’s also an outlet for scammers to take advantage of people.

Before you decide to sign up for CNA training classes online or give out your personal information to a job placement agency, it’s important to research the companies to ensure they are legitimate.

How to Identify CNA Training Scams

When you start searching for CNA training courses online, you will find many solicitations for CNA training that is quick and easy to complete.

Red flags that signal that a CNA training program is a scam are:

• Programs that promise you can complete your training in a very short time.
• You don’t need a high school diploma or GED.
• The program is completely hands off, which means you won’t need to work with anyone to earn your certification.
• The program makes no mention of having accreditation.

The Truth Behind CNA Training Scammers Read the rest of this entry »

After CNA Training: Career Questions

You’ve received your CNA training and passed the certification exam. Now the opportunity to move out of state has come up. Was all your hard work and CNA training a waste or can your nursing credentials be transferred?

Transferring Your CNA Training Certificate to Another State

According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, whether or not your CNA training certification is transferrable depends on your new state of residence. Some states will not require any further CNA training, while others will. In some states you’ll just need to take the certification exam for that particular state.

To find out what your new state will require of you, contact that state’s Board of Nursing Assistant Agency. This can be easily accessed online through a simple Google search.

We don’t suggest attempting to find the answer to your question online without making a call to your state’s Board of Nursing. Often, websites with CNA training information will try to provide additional information regarding certification specifics, but it may be outdated or just plain unreliable. For this reason we recommend contacting the board directly.

CNA Training & Career Questions: Contacting the Board of Nursing Assistants Directly Read the rest of this entry »

CNA Training & Career Help

You’ve completed your CNA training and you’re ready to begin a rewarding career as a nursing assistant. While it may sound easy enough to get your resume together and your CNA training credentials to set out for a day of job hunting, we’ve got news for you. More and more medical facilities, especially large organizations, are only hiring through online job sites.

The Internet Alternative to CNA Training Graduate Job Search

Trust us, once you get the hang of searching online to land your first job as a CNA training graduate, you’ll be thankful you don’t have to drive from facility to facility. The internet is a much more efficient way to find your first job. You’ll immediately be aware of the requirements of the medical facility, what type of CNA training you’ll need to have, and whether they will hire a brand new CNA training graduate without experience or not. You’ll even be able to scan and upload copies of your CNA training and certification online.

If you don’t have prior experience, don’t stress,  Indeed.com, a leading job search website, has recent CNA training graduates listed who are actively seeking employment and succeeding. One of the greatest things about this site is that you can post your resume, speak with others and find average salary information for your area, according to Indeed.com.

While each job search website is a bit different in the way that you can post your resume, your certification, and your CNA training credentials, you can usually figure out the steps quite easily. For example, for the Indeed.com job search site, simply fill out the form about the type of CNA employment you would like, your salary requirements and then upload your resume straight from your computer. A benefit to the site Indeed.com is that you’ll receive a personalized URL to send to potential employers who would like to see it.

The site places your job requirements and resume into its database and allows employers to find you. Read the rest of this entry »

CNA Training  – Tips for Your Test

You’ve worked so hard on your CNA training so you don’t want to blow all that effort and time by failing your certification exam. Knowing what to do when you get to the exam will greatly help your chances of passing.

The good news is that the examination isn’t all that difficult. As long as you paid attention during your CNA training courses, you should be good to go on the test.

The practical part of the exam is generally the only part that intimidates students. This is where you’ll perform the actions you’ve learned, such as moving a patient or taking vital signs. All of the steps have been covered in your CNA training classes but the anxiety of an instructor watching and grading you can make you miss some crucial actions. What should you do? The main help is to continually practice the steps while looking at your CNA training manual to be sure you don’t miss any steps. Here’s some additional advice that will get you from CNA training classes to CNA training graduation and certification.

CNA Training – Passing Your Test Read the rest of this entry »

CNA Training FAQ

You’ve taken your CNA training courses and now you’re ready to take the exam. Of course you don’t want to fail the examination so you’re wondering if you should purchase that study guide you were offered online.

About CNA Training Exam Preparation

Well, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, there are no practice tests to further prepare you after CNA Training. However, they do recommend that if you review the material from your CNA training courses, you’ll be a good position to pass the exam.

The certification exam has two parts: written and practical. Many exam takers say that the written test is a breeze and that it has more to do with common sense then the specifics of what you’ve learned in your CNA training. What you may have a little trouble with is the practical portion since you’ll have a test examiner looking over your shoulder who isn’t as familiar as your CNA training instructor had become.

Since you had a practicum in which you were made to practice all of the duties you are responsible for as a CNA, this section is basically a review of everything you did in those lessons. If you review each section of your notes for the practicum section of your CAN training classes, you’ll be ready to pass this part.

Most CNA training students won’t have to purchase the study guides because they can use the material from their CNA training guide to prepare for the examination. However, if you feel that you could use supplemental reading, you may benefit from the CNA study guides.

How a CNA Training Study Guides Can Help You Read the rest of this entry »