Can nursing school earn you a CNA?

SmilingBluEyes · Jun 7, 2014

You will have to ask the nursing school. Some do, most do not. As a matter of fact, many schools require you to be a CNA before they will admit you to their programs at all.

vintagemother, BSN, CNA, LVN, RN · Jun 7, 2014

I'm not in your state, so you might want to check the website in your state for certifying CNAs. In my state, you can become an CNA after the first semester. You still have to take the CNA test,but you don't need to take the CNA class, as the concepts are covered in the first term.

HTH!

elemenRN · Jun 8, 2014

I'm not sure what state you're in, but in Maryland you can apply for your CNA license after you pass the first semester of fundamentals (RN program anyway). No exam required. That was at least the case back in 2008. Your BON website should be able to shed some more light on the situation. Have your instructors not mentioned anything about that? I remember my instructors openly telling us that.

kdrm · Jun 9, 2014

On the Arizona Board of Nursing website, there is a CNA Education Waiver Nursing Student form (under Other Forms Downloads) that your school would use to document that you meet the following criteria: Nursing students who, within the past 2 years, have successfully completed a nursing course as part of an approved RN/LPN program including: didactic content relating to Long Term Care clients; 40 hours of patient care in a long-term care (LTC )or comparable facility; and documentation of meeting requirements from the course instructor or nursing program director/designee.

You would then include that form with the Arizona Nursing Assistant (NA) Examination Application.

Are you a Maricopa nursing student? The 2013-2014 Nursing Student Handbook says on pg 10 that after Blocks 2 or 3 and completion of NUR 191 (Practical Nurse Transition), students qualify to sit for the NCLEX-PN exam.

Since Block 1 is Fundamentals according to the Curriculum model chart on pg 2 and it's my understanding that block 1 clinicals are in LTC facilities, I would imagine that Block 1 alone qualifies for the CNA education waiver. Do you remember how many clinical hours you had and were they all in the same LTC location?

mrsboots87 · Jun 16, 2014

Yes. In AZ you can sit for the NA certification exam after completing block 1 of the nursing program. You need to have your school nursing advisor fill out the nursing education waiver form from the AZ BON website and then they fax it to the BON. You will get an email a couple weeks later that was sent to you and headmaster (the testing administrators) stating you are eligible to sit for the NA exam. You then send your headmaster application and payment to headmaster to get your test date and location. After you pass, you have to mail the education waiver form with your CNA app, as well as a transcript showing your block 1 nursing course grade to the BON for your certificate.