CNA is an ellipsis of “Certified Nursing Assistant” / “Certified Nurse Assistant”. As suggested from the name itself a CNA is a Nursing Assistant that lends a hand to senior nurses. These aides usually give their duties at Nursing homes, Adult day health centers, Hospitals, Assisted living facilities and private homes even. The main responsibility of a CNA involves providing individual medical attention and aid with utmost care, irrespective of the patient’s age. CNAs are frequently observed and supervised by their senior nurses. Nurses get all the crucial information about patient’s health and progress from CNAs, as they maintain a comprehensive connection and communication with their patients.

One common and basic factor among all wide-spread health care vocations is delivering undeviating and straightforward care and devotion. These health care personnel are mostly categorized as Nursing Aides, Certified Nursing Assistants, Personal Care Assistants, Patient Care Technicians, Home health aides, together with several other titles which can vary according to the state or locale.

Main functions of a CNA:

• Performing imperative duties like measuring blood pressure and pulse.
• Help the patients in doing exercises as prescribed by the physiotherapist.
• Bandage and dressing, which can range from nominal aid to complete dependency as per patients requirement and condition.
• Taking care of proper and timely feeding, especially in case of physically impaired or incapable patients.
• Sponging and bathing, which can include shower, tub bath or bed bath as per the need of the situation.
• Proper upkeep of catheter that involves evacuating and time to time replacing of sheets whenever required.
• Assembling beds and maintaining the cleanliness and tidiness in patient’s room and his possessions.
• Keeping a track of patient’s, medication, basic needs and other activities.
• Ambulation- to help the patient with movements.
• All bodily and psychological changes should be reported to the nurse.

What should I do in order to become a CNA?

All you need to do with the aim of becoming a Certified Nursing Assistant is to appear and clear State CNA exam. Schedules of all training courses can be located from hospitals, medical facilities and community colleges. Some states also run Red Cross CNA Class. These training classes are normally taken by a registered nurse and the curriculum of the program decides the duration of training. Classes can progress from only 2 weeks to even up to one month, which depends upon the specific faculty and on their numbers. These classes train you completely to give you an idea of what is expected from this career. Yet this is a profession where your skills, personality and confidence will be groomed drastically when you will hit the floor as a Nursing Assistant by itself.

CNA test comprises of two parts, one is clinical and the other is written. Written part of the assessment will involve checking your common sense, where as in clinical one you are supposed to bring a dummy person with you, on whom you will perform your clinical skills.

Attributes required for a CNA are not much different from the traits required in Nursing. Some of the essential characteristics’ of a CNA are patience, caring nature, devotion and willingness and capability to handle several physically exhausting activities and above all the longing to help others.

In recent times most of the medical organizations are facing the prolonged issue of short fall of Nursing Assistants and consequently a huge mass of CNAs are finding themselves in the exigent state of handling far too many patients together single-handedly at the same time trying to maintain good quality of care too. Therefore the attrition rate is getting higher day by day around the world, as it is not a piece of cake for everyone to handle so many things at a time.