Nursing Aides (CNA) - Alabama Nursing Schools and Nursing Programs

Certified Nursing Assistants

Most jobs for certified nursing assistants (CNA) are in nursing and residential care facilities, hospitals, and home health care services. Numerous CNA job openings and excellent job opportunities are expected. Home health aides is projected to be the fastest growing occupation through 2014. Modest entry requirements, low pay, high physical and emotional demands, and lack of advancement opportunities characterize this occupation.

Training programs vary with state regulations. In most cases, a high school diploma is necessary for a job as a nursing assistant but a high school diploma generally is not required for jobs as home health aides. Hospitals may require previous experience as a nursing aide or home health aide. Some employers provide classroom instruction for newly hired nursing assistants, while others rely exclusively on informal on-the-job instruction by a licensed nurse or an experienced aide. Such training may last from several days to a few months. Nursing assistants also may attend lectures, workshops, and in-service training.

Nursing care facilities often hire inexperienced workers, who must complete a minimum of 75 hours of mandatory training and pass a competency evaluation as part of a state-approved training program within four months of their employment. Nursing aides who complete the program are known as certified nurse assistants (CNA) and are placed on the state registry of nursing aides. Some states also require psychiatric aides to complete a formal training program but most psychiatric aides learn their skills on the job from experienced workers.

Nursing assistants help care for physically or mentally ill, injured, disabled, or infirm individuals confined to hospitals, nursing care facilities, and mental health settings. Home health aides have similar duties but they work in patients' homes or residential care facilities. In general, nursing aides perform routine tasks under the supervision of nursing and medical staff.

Nursing aides answer patients' call lights, serve meals, make beds, and help patients to eat, dress, and bathe. Nursing assistants may also provide skin care to patients, take their temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure, and help them to get into and out of bed and walk. Nursing aides may also escort patients to operating and examining rooms, keep patients' rooms neat, set up equipment, store and move supplies, and assist with some procedures. Nursing aides observe patients' physical, mental, and emotional conditions and report changes to the nursing or medical staff.

Nurse aides spend many hours each day standing and walking and they often deal with heavy workloads. Because they are usually required to move patients in and out of bed or help them stand or walk, nursing assistants must guard against back injury. Nursing aides employed in nursing care facilities often are the principal caregivers, having far more contact with residents than other members of the staff.