In order to become an accepted certified nursing assistant (CNA) in the state of California, you must be duly registered with California’s Department of Health Services (DHS), a state body that approves all CNA training programs in the state. The department further maintains a CNA registry which registers only individuals who have sat and passed the CNA certification examination in California, or it’s comparable. This article explains to you how you can find a legal recognized program for certification in the State of California. You will also learn about the characteristics to look out for in a good CNA program.
CNA California Requirements
To pursue CNA certification in California, you will have to be at least 16 years old, must complete a thorough and extensive training program that takes a minimum of 150 training hours. Upon successful completion of the program you should be well prepared to sit the licensing examination which is state-approved. Further, you should be ready to undergo physical and medical examination so as to ensure you do not pose any health risks to your patients whom you will be interacting with on a regular basis.
Characteristics of California CNA Program
There are very many CNA certification training programs available throughout California, most of which you can get in community centers, adults schools, community colleges, and health care facilities. These programs, which typically take 150 hours to complete the training, are approved and fully recognized by DHS. There are so many characteristics of a CNA training program in California, but the following essential skills are trained throughout all the training programs:-
- Patient’s rights
- Infection control
- Emergency procedures
- Long-term health care safety measures and procedures
- Medical assisting i.e. temperature monitoring, medication delivery, and blood pressuring measuring
A CNA student is also expected to spend part of the 150 hours under supervised hand-on clinical practice to ascertain that they have mastered the right interpersonal and medical skills that will allow them to be effective and competent health care givers in the job field.
CNA Certification Programs
As previously mentioned, DHS maintains a list of all approved programs in the state of California which has many recognized online and offline offerings throughout the state. If you are thus interested in getting a training course, you can always check with the DHS CNA certification programs list.
It is important to keep in mind that while there are many CNA programs offered at physical locations throughout the state of California, there currently are no fully virtual training opportunities that are DHS-approved. You should thus shop around and do comparison shopping, but you should be wary of training programs that claim to extend state-approved CNA training opportunities entirely online.
The benefit of going for a recognized state-approved CNA training program in California is that when you complete the program you will be allowed to sit for the licensing examination and upon successful completion you will be placed on the CNA list of recognized practitioners in California, thus giving you a wide scope of employment opportunities.