Essential knowledge for CNA student success

What is a CNA?

A CNA stands for Certified Nursing Assistant/Aide a CNA provides care for patients in hospitals, nursing homes and care facilities. CNA’s are an essential part of a healthcare team. They are responsible for patients’ basic needs such as bathing, eating and dressing. They support nurses in their roles to be able to focus on more clinical care. They help to build strong relationships with patients as they see them daily and therefore can report any changes in their physical or mental health to managers. They are essential to any large healthcare team.

Thinking of changing your career to become a CNA?

Changing careers can be a daunting task, choosing the right career for you can take time, thinking about changing careers into healthcare can be even more challenging if you don’t know how the healthcare industry works. First of all, think of the key reasons you would like to work in the healthcare industry? To help others, to find a purpose, to find a new challenge? Everyone’s reasons may differ. Working in health care can be the most rewarding job, from seeing patients flourish under your care, making lifelong friends, and working as a team to provide excellent care. However, it is important to be realistic, the healthcare industry can be rewarding but it can also be hard and demanding on your mental and physical health. Taking this into account before applying to become a CNA can help balance reward vs work. Becoming a CNA can offer great benefits such as job stability, flexible hours, travel opportunities, and you can work your way up into other healthcare positions should you want to. If you think becoming a CNA may be the job for you, you can start applying for CNA schools in your local area. Each school is different, so read reviews from past students and explore school rankings in your state to find the right course and school for you.

What do you need to know to become a CNA?

Building good foundational knowledge of the healthcare system can be a great first step to becoming a CNA. Research life as a CNA, what do CNA’s do, CNA certification in your state, how much do CNA’s make. Start to plan and research schools in your area, do they have flexible schedules, can you go to a night school, can you still become a CNA and work full time? These are all important questions to ask, changing careers can be life changing so it’s important to make the right decision for you.

Next steps after you decide that becoming a CNA is for you is to start to build some foundational medical knowledge, find out about how the healthcare system operates, research what makes a good team in healthcare, the more you know before entering CNA school the more comfortable you’ll feel when it comes to start studying. Start working on building your medical terminology knowledge too as this will become your new language and you’ll be speaking it daily as part of your classes and in your future career. Having strong medical terminology knowledge before you enter CNA school can give you time to focus on other study materials, it will also help you to understand teachers and professionals in work placements. If you’re looking to choose the right medical terminology course for you, we cover popular Medical terminology courses here (link to our other blog) or you can go ahead and check out our full medical terminology flashcard app here.

What is the difference between CNA vs medical assistant

One frequently asked question is what is the difference between a CNA and Medical assistant (MA) the biggest difference is CNA’s support nurses and Medical assistants support doctors. So what does that look like in terms of roles within a healthcare team? CNA’s work directly with patient care, they help patients eat, bathe, and dress themselves. Whereas Medical assistants complete tasks for doctors, they prep and clean exam rooms, administer vaccines, less patient care and more clinical tasks. Becoming a certified medical assistant requires more schooling and earns more money on average than a CNA. Becoming a CNA or MA requires different skills so CNA’s may be more personable in their roles and MA’s might enjoy more clinical tasks. At first glance these roles may seem similar but it’s worth researching before enrolling in MA or CNA school to find out which you may be better suited for.

Who is suited for a travel CNA position?

So you have seen Tiktoks videos, and posts on instagram sharing stories on life as a travel CNA? This might seem like a fun career path for you but let’s go over what it really takes to become a travel CNA. If traveling the country sounds like an amazing opportunity, then becoming a travel CNA might just be the job for you. Typically travel CNAs earn more money than regular CNA so that might appeal to most but being in a new state every few weeks/months might not, being away from family and friends for long periods of time might be a huge no for some. So before embarking on a career as a travel CNA it’s important to think about life on the road and whether it could be the travel adventure you’ve been looking for, getting to meet new people, explore new cities and states or are you more of a homebody who prefers your home state.

How can a medical terminology course help you become a better CNA student?

Medical terminology will become your second language, so familiarizing yourself before you embark on becoming a CNA will help equip you with essential foundational knowledge before you even start CNA training. You will understand your teachers more easily, be able to speak with registered nurses quicker and understand tasks from nurses correctly. You’ll be less likely to make mistakes if you know what you’re talking about and what tasks are being assigned to you. Overall it will give you a better understanding of what you’re studying and prepare you for life in a hospital or care facility.

How to choose the right medical terminology course for you

We recommend taking a full medical terminology course such as the Dean Vaughn Medical Terminology app. Choosing these fun flashcards is a great way to help memorize these difficult to learn latin and greek terms. You’ll only have to learn 275 flashcards in order to memorize over 11,000 complex medical terms. Join millions of students who have learned medical terminology by using Dean Vaughn.