Has anyone failed?

I practiced at home alot on my daughter.It really helped me at remembering all those steps. I also watched the CNA videos that were posted earlier on the stickies I think. It had all the skills to watch and gave me ideas on what I needed to work on. You'll do fine.


Kim

Maybe you can ask your school if you can revisit during the time you are studying for your exam to witness some of these things again.

I have a friend that worked in the nursing skills lab at my college. When I graduated, I started working in a clinic, where we are not doing IVs. She offered me to come up there during my free time so that she would show me again. I didn't get a chance to go, because one of the nurses on the floor showed me again, but I would have ran there had I had no other choice. Good luck!

I had a horrible CNA class experience -- our instructor was in and out of the hospital, so we never got to practice much on the skills in our clinical or lab settings. Most days when he was gone, we had to go to clinicals anyway (otherwise we'd all fail the class) but all we did was feed! We had a BSN to supervise us from the school, but she didn't do much. Needless to say, I felt unprepared and was terrified of taking my test. So much that I waited a year (almost to the day) to take it.

It was the biggest mistake I've ever made -- I lost a whole year of what could've been good working experience for my resume. I finally realized I needed to get it together and got a CNA job, learned the skills a bit, and then tested out. Just review these videos on the sticky, and ask fellow CNAs for tips on the skills you're unsure about. Don't be too nervous when you actually test out, either -- if you forget any little thing and suddenly remember it later, just mention it to your evaluator and what you'd do correctly and she'll change your score. But just do it while you're in the testing area still.

A couple of things I tell everyone, too. I had a choking resident as one of my skills -- if you don't yell out "Help!" or say "Yelling 'help'!" you won't get any points for the entire skill, and would need a really great score on the rest to pass, as you probably know. During my skill, I said, "She's choking!" really loudly, and the evaluator mentioned to me that she would excuse it, but told me what I had to do in the real situation. I was lucky!

Also, our instructor had a rule that went along with fitting a gait belt: "If you can hear ribs cracking, it's still not tight enough." Make sure it's snug! I got lucky on this one; my faux-resident had just had surgery and stitches so it got to hang loose.

Good luck! If you have any questions about any of the skills, ask around!

Good luck with clinicals, DreamyEyes! I enjoyed it a lot more than being in the classroom or lab.

You'll do great.