Steps in Your CNA Certification and Your CNA Training
While you should certainly study for the exam on your own, your training classes will be an invaluable part of your education.
When it comes down to finding one of the best classes you can, you should look at the American Red Crosses' offerings.
For most students, taking the Red Cross Course is the difference between feeling totally confident about their exam, and worrying whether they are really prepared.
Even though there are plenty of other courses offered to prepare you for your upcoming career, few have the reputation that the Red Cross classes have earned.
Now, the CNA course is made up of two parts.
Passing both parts is necessary to pass the exam as a whole.
The first half of the process involves taking a written test.
The written portion is the part of the test where you answer multiple-choice questions that relate to all the information that you learned in your course.
This half of the test is usually composed of about 100 individual questions.
Most people are able to complete these part of the test in a bout an hour or two, but even if you finish early you have to sit in the testing space until everyone taking the test have completed their first section.
After everyone is done, you'll all be ready to move on to the second half of the exam.
The second half of the CNA certification exam is a series of skills tests.
This goes a little differently than the writing section, as only one student can be skills tested at a time.
This part of the test can encompass a wide variety of skills tests, as your instructor is able to call on you to perform any of the skills that you learned during your course.
Sometimes you'll have to bring another person with you to act as a sample patient, but other times you will actually be working with patients in some sort of health-related setting.
During most skills tests you'll have to demonstrate a couple of different skills, usually around 5.
Now, during your training you certainly learned more than just 5 different skills, so be aware that you need to know how to do anything you learned without prior warning.
Because every step is so crucial, you're going to want to keep as cool a head as possible during your examination.
While your examiner will obviously understand if you are nervous, and be able to tell if you are, it's better to be as calm as possible anyone.
Pay attention in class, study outside of class, and practice your skills every chance you get to feel as confident as you can for your test.
Once you're done, you can wait as long as a few weeks until you know whether or not you passed your exam.
If you didn't pass, then don't worry.
While it can be discouraging, you can always retake it.