Becoming a nursing assistant

Nursing assistant, or NA, is someone who is trained to help clients with their healthcare needs and activities of daily living under the supervision of a licensed nurse. Nursing assistants have been around for a long time and are well-trained and valuable members of the healthcare team.

Alright, there are many different healthcare facilities where nursing assistants can work. In fact, wherever there’s a need for healthcare, nursing assistants can lend a hand.

Such places include hospitals, nursing homes, home care, assisted living facilities, hospice organizations, long-term care facilities, correctional institutions, and skilled-nursing facilities.

In these various settings, nursing assistants provide physical and emotional care for people who are sick, disabled, or injured.

They help people who require assistance with activities of daily living. This ranges from personal hygiene, turning and repositioning bed-ridden clients, to helping clients eat.

As part of the healthcare staff, nursing assistants also help to observe the wellness of the clients by measuring their vital signs, weight, and pain level, which they document and report to the rest of the staff.

Now, the minimum training and competency requirements to become a nursing assistant are established by a federal law known as the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987, or simply OBRA.

The OBRA-required minimum training period for a nursing assistant program is 75 hours, among which 16 must be clinical training supervised by a registered nurse who has a minimum of 2 years of experience.

75 hours of training is just the minimum set by OBRA, but indeed, the period of training varies among states, and it may go up to 180 hours. So it’s important to get familiar with your state’s program requirements.

Upon completion of the training program, candidates must take and pass the competency exam in the state they were trained. The exam includes a written or oral component, plus a practical session to test your skills.

OBRA requires that, after the exam, states keep records of the successful candidates in the state’s nurse aide registry, or NAR, for a period of at least 5 years.