Nursing Assistant Question

I would say depending on the state that you are in you may want to retake the course because a lot has changed since 1997. I work with a girl that went out to California for a few years and then she came back to Indiana and her certificate expired and they made her retake the course to get certified again. But thats just my advice from what I know.

You are in the same boat as me a few months ago, (except it was NAR for me instead of CNA). I worked as a NAR in 1997 and my NAR thingy (yes "thingy" is a technical descriptive word! Lol) expired so what I had to do was retake Fundamentals of Caregiving (Revised, now) and retake all of the other pertinent classes and then send about 200$ or so off to the state licensing folks (I live in Washington state) to renew my NAR thingy along with a copy of my FOC certificate and First Aid/CPR and HIV certificates. Normally it's 53$ once a year on your birthday to renew it but there were late fees and other fees I needed to take care of first. Now, with all of the new changes in the law, etc, any CNA/NAR who did not work in 2011 must fill out and submit a "Long Term Care Worker" application and must take the 40 hour FoC course as opposed to the 28 hour course and they refer to us as "Long Term Care Workers" instead of NAR/CNAs or Caregivers. It cost me around $900 or so get myself "back on track" and all I can say is thank goodness for family members being too cheap to hire a "real nurse" and giving me $900 under the table to stay a month with my sister's husband's alcohol-demented mother. That experience nearly scared me off caregiving for good before I even started up again! But, at least I got the means to meet my ends and now I have a real, regular job that pays better than I've ever gotten before working as a NAR back "in the day". Good luck!