It takes the cooperation of everyone at a medical facility to maintain proper infection control procedures. Anyone touching patients or participating in the clinical environment must understand how disease is spread and proper precautions, such as hand washing, gloves, clean clothes and surgical masks. Because CNAs handle human waste and soiled linens, they receive not only theoretical education about how diseases are passed along, but also specific protocols and methods they should use when handling potentially infectious materials.
Many patients, particularly old and frail ones, rely on CNAs to help them walk, get into wheelchairs and get from place to place. This can be as short a journey as getting to the bathroom and as long as taking walks around the facility's grounds. CNAs must understand the principles involved in ambulating fragile patients, including proper use of gait belts that help with safe walking, wheelchairs and walkers. In some cases, CNAs may need to follow orders from physicians or physical therapists as to how to move a patient in a manner consistent with her therapeutic needs.
Some states, including Oregon and Arizona, allow CNAs to perform a few very basic nursing interventions, such as enemas, temperature taking and passing medications. Because there is skill involved in safely and properly performing these clinical functions, CNAs receive instruction during their certification courses. Because patients may have come from surgery, have limited mobility, be obese or bariatric or have especially weak and frail bodies, CNAs need to learn several ways to approach these procedures.
Clinical care takes patients' mental, emotional and psychological states into account. In fact, some CNAs work in psychiatric wards, facilities with mentally challenged people and Alzheimer's and dementia specialty facilities where they need a keen understanding of behavior in order to perform their jobs well. CNA courses teach CNAs about a variety of human behaviors and how to work with them. This helps CNAs know what to do when they get patients of various diagnoses as well as help regular medical and surgical patients cope with the traumas and effects that are common to people undergoing major medical issues.