CNA Training in Nursing Homes - Caring For The Elderly

Individuals aspiring to be certified nursing assistants (CNA) are required to undergo clinical instruction in healthcare facilities, of which the most common are nursing homes. In these settings, students learn practical skills and hone their personal qualities essential in their future work as front liners in healthcare. Of course, students learn under the direction of professionals including registered nurses and experienced nursing assistants.

Practical Skills

The tasks done in nursing homes by aspiring nursing assistants are similar, if not identical, to the roles and responsibilities performed by certified nursing aides. Think of your clinical instruction time spent in these long-term healthcare facilities for the elderly and disabled persons as a prelude to actual work conditions when you are employed as a certified nursing assistant. Said instruction is obviously one-half of the complete CNA training program with the other half being classroom instruction on various subjects from basic nursing care to anatomy and physiology.

What practical skills are you going to learn? To mention a few:

• Observing residents and reporting any issues affecting their overall health to the supervising nurse;

• Attending to - or providing assistance for relatively mobile residents - the patients' personal hygiene including bed baths, brushing teeth and nail care;

• Emptying bed pans and catheter bags;

• Assisting in bowel movement activities;

• Taking, recording and monitoring of vital signs;

• Feeding residents;

• Making the residents' beds;

• Bringing the residents to other areas of the nursing home;

• Turning bedridden residents in their beds.

It should be noted that learning these skills will come in handy, indeed, during the CNA certification exam. In the exam, the proctor will ask applicants to demonstrate competence in 5 of the abovementioned practical skills. If you have already honed your skills in the nursing home, the exam should be a breeze.

Personal Qualities

CNA training in nursing homes also teach students important personal qualities in dealing with residents, colleagues and other healthcare professionals like nurses, physical therapists and doctors. After all, a certified nursing assistant should not work in a vacuum with his patients.

The most important personal qualities are:

• Compassion and empathy - Nursing aides work in environments where residents are often at their most vulnerable in the physical and mental sense. Residents suffer from many types of ailments, which make them irritable, depressed and anxious. Your compassion and empathy toward their plight will go a long way toward making them feel better despite their circumstances.

• Trustworthiness - Nursing aides have access to medical records where sensitive personal information and health data are stored. You must not divulge or take advantage of said access. Plus, your patients may confide personal information about their lives, which you are not in a position to gossip about to others.

Of course, you must also be physically and mentally fit to undergo the practical training.