Regarding specific skills, every nurse aide must be able to correctly measure and record a patient's blood pressure, weight, urinary output, radial pulse and respirations. In addition to those basics, some of the specific skills that may be chosen as the five on the nurse aide's CNA exam include assisting with the use of a bedpan, making an unoccupied bed, positioning patients on their side, feeding patients who cannot feed themselves and transferring a patient from the bed to a wheelchair.
The first thing the nurse aide should do when asked to perform a skill is to walk over to the sink and demonstrate proper hand-washing if she hasn't done so already. This involves the washing of hands and underneath fingernails with soap for about 20 seconds. Next, the nurse aide should dry her hands with the paper towel and use the paper towel, not her hands, to turn off the sink water. The examiner will be looking for all of those specific actions.
The safety of the patient is of utmost importance both during the hands-on skills portion of the CNA exam and in daily work thereafter. One aspect of safety that nurse aides often overlook is making sure that they are wearing non-skid shoes. Other things that the examiner will be looking for in terms of safety awareness are the use of a gait belt when performing the transfer of a patient, making sure the call light is within reach of the patient and making sure that she locks the wheels of the wheelchair before helping a patient in or out of the chair.
One of the main jobs of a CNA is to make sure that patients feel comfortable when she sees them. Before performing any skills, the nurse aide should introduce herself and ask how the patient is feeling. It's also a good idea for the nurse aide to announce each step in the task before she performs it. The nurse aide should always remember to create the most privacy possible for the patient. In specific, she should always pull the privacy curtain closed when performing on a patient. Lastly, the nurse aide should avoid calling patients names like "honey" or "dear" because the examiner will consider it undignified and unprofessional.