Mannequins or REAL ppl?

Nursing Students CNA/MA

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This might be a dumb question, but I'm asking anyway lol...

When you take the skills test for CNA, do you test with an actual person, or a mannequin...?

Curious...

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Specializes in ICU. Med/Surg: Ortho, Neuro, & Cardiac.
This might be a dumb question, but I'm asking anyway lol...

When you take the skills test for CNA, do you test with an actual person, or a mannequin...?

Curious...

For my test, it was an actual person. For skills like vitals, moving resident up in bed, we would do those skills on our classmates.

And for things like pericare or communication with the confused resident, we'd do on a resident in the NH.

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Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.

For the actual exam, I had a mannequin because I could not find someone to come with me. I guess I got away with that one, but then, while waiting to take the written exam, the instructor asked me to help another test taker by allowing him to take my vital signs. I was nervous FOR him, because I am known to have a weak pulse, and what I did was breathe really slow for him so that he could count the 18 breaths in one minute. I guess he got the pulse right because he sat with me for the written exam.

Make sure you do practice taking blood pressures on friends, so that you can hear properly if this is one of your skills. The instructor might have a double stethoscope and will be listening right next to you, or if they don't, they will do it again right in front of you. We were allowed to be off about 2-4 for pulse and I think 10 for blood pressure. Good luck!

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Specializes in ICU. Med/Surg: Ortho, Neuro, & Cardiac.

On my state test, before we started, the girl who I ended up having to take B/P on was like, "If any of you get me for blood pressure, I normally run 144/95." Haha, she was close, because I got like 140/92.

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I had a real person for a bed to wheelchair transfer on the skills test... which I failed. It's really quite different from practicing on mannequins which is what we mostly did in class. Unfortunately my classmates weren't quite as serious about learning it seemed so I didn't have much opportunity to practice on real people in an appropriate manner. So, for anything that -might- require you to perform the procedure on a real person, I would take as many opportunities as you can to practice doing this on a real person rather than a mannequin.

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Specializes in LTC.

Pretty much everything except for peri-care was done on a real person for the test.

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Specializes in geriatric care.

Peri-care and catheter care are done on the mannequin. A lot depends on what state

you are in. The testing agency in your state gives you all the information on how your CNA test will be done. If you go to avanzaedu.org you will find information on the 3 main

testing agencies out there. Promissor, Headmaster and Prometric. If you don't know which one is in your state you can find out on this site. There is also a Skills Video that

has all the skills demonstrated for you step by step. You can read about what to expect on the day of your test and you can also call any of the testing agencies and

ask questions. There are tips on how to get ready for your test as well. The more you now what to expect the day of the test the less nervous you are. You are doing the right thing by asking questions!! Good Luck!!

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We had partners that we would practice on. The only dummies we used were in CPR.

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Specializes in Corrections.

We used both.

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I had a real person

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