Online Education

Certified Nursing Assistant or CNA training is essential for someone who wants to start a career in patient care as nursing assistant. Though, not the most glamorous job title in this sector, it puts you in the front line of patient care.

What The Job Involves

Also known as nurses’ aides, orderlies, patient care technicians, and home health aides, you will work under the authority of a nurse, director of care or doctor. You will be involved in patient care to help them daily living tasks.

Your work will involve basic services like giving baths, grooming and feeding patients, assisting with medical equipment, checking vital signs of patients among others. You are the hospital representative closest to the patients. You are with them almost the whole day or your shift. This makes you responsible for giving them social and emotional support as well. Besides patient care, you are also responsible for keeping the nursing staff updated on the patient condition and other vital information.

As a CNA you can either choose to work with doctors and nurses in a hospital setting on the floor or the emergency room, mental health facilities or give care to the elderly in a nursing home. Usually the working hours are great for a CNA. You can choose to work full-time or part-time. There are three shifts – morning, evening and night, like any other shift-based job and you are expected to be available for all three.

Training And Certification

Nursing assistant certification is required for anyone who wants to be in this noble career. The regulations for the certification vary from state to state. Most CNA programs offer a certification exam, and for home health aides a national certification is provided by the National Association for Home Care.

To become a CNA, you need a high school diploma or GED and completion of a 6-12 week certificate CNA training program at a community college or medical facility. This includes classroom and clinical training. The focus of CNA classes is on basic nursing skills, anatomy and physiology, nutrition and infection control.

There are many universities that provide CNA training classes and many of them are online like South University and University of Phoenix. For those who are unable to pay for the CNA training, there are other options where they can join free CNA classes and get trained for the certification. To find these options you can start by contacting your state board of nursing and then also looking online for resources that can help you find these free CNA training schools.

The compensation for an entry-level CNA position generally ranges between ,925 and ,764 and can go up to ,377. The salary that a Certified Nursing Assistant gets paid depends largely on experience and place of work. It is expected that the nursing assistant jobs will increase by about 28 percent by 2016.

Nursing assistant can be the starting point of a rewarding career as a registered nurse. It is, therefore, imperative that a person looking to join the healthcare sector need to carefully choose the CNA training program and get certified.

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