A CNA class is a state-approved training program that prepares you to work as a certified nursing assistant. It combines classroom instruction with hands-on clinical practice, typically totaling 75 to 120 hours depending on your state. After completing the program, you take a certification exam, and passing it places you on your state’s nurse aide registry, which allows you to work in hospitals, nursing homes, and other healthcare settings.
What You Learn in a CNA Class
The curriculum covers a broad mix of caregiving knowledge and practical nursing skills. Federal regulations require at least 16 hours of foundational training before you ever touch a patient. That initial phase covers communication, infection control, emergency procedures (including the Heimlich maneuver), promoting patient independence, and understanding residents’ rights.
From there, the coursework expands into several core areas:
- Basic nursing skills: taking and recording vital signs like blood pressure, pulse, and respirations; measuring height and weight; recognizing abnormal changes in a patient’s condition and knowing when to alert a supervisor; and providing care when death is imminent.
- Personal care: bathing, grooming, mouth care, dressing, toileting, feeding techniques, skin care, and safely transferring or repositioning patients.
- Mental health and social needs: understanding the aging process, responding appropriately to residents’ behavior, supporting personal choices, and involving family members in emotional support.
- Dementia care: communicating with cognitively impaired residents, understanding behaviors associated with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, and using techniques to reduce the effects of cognitive decline.
- Restorative care: helping residents maintain range of motion, using assistive devices for walking and eating, proper turning and positioning in bed and chairs, and bowel and bladder training.
Residents’ rights form a thread that runs through the entire program. You’ll learn how to protect privacy and confidentiality, help residents resolve complaints, safeguard personal belongings, and recognize and report abuse or neglect.
Hands-On Skills You’ll Practice
CNA classes aren’t just lectures. A significant portion of your time is spent in a skills lab practicing specific procedures you’ll be tested on. Washington State’s skills checklist, which is representative of most programs, includes 22 distinct competencies: hand washing, putting on and removing protective equipment (gowns and gloves), giving a bed bath, providing mouth and foot care, cleaning dentures, assisting with a bedpan, measuring urinary output, counting pulse and respirations, taking manual blood pressure, recording weight, dressing a patient with a weak arm, feeding a patient, performing passive range-of-motion exercises for shoulders, knees, and ankles, positioning a patient on their side, transferring someone from a bed to a wheelchair using a transfer belt, assisting with walking, providing catheter care, and applying elastic stockings.
Each skill follows a specific checklist. During practice and testing, you’re evaluated on whether you wash your hands before and after, explain what you’re doing to the patient, maintain privacy, and perform the steps in the correct order.
How Long the Program Takes
The federal government sets a floor but not a ceiling for training hours. Many states exceed the federal minimum substantially. Texas, for example, requires 100 hours total: 60 hours of classroom instruction and 40 hours of clinical training. Wisconsin requires 75 hours, including at least 16 hours of clinical work. Some states push requirements even higher, into the 150-hour range.
In practice, most CNA classes run between 4 and 12 weeks. Accelerated programs that meet full-time can finish in as little as three to four weeks. Evening and weekend programs stretch longer but let you keep a day job while training. Hybrid programs, where you complete the lecture portion online and attend in-person sessions for lab work and clinicals, offer additional scheduling flexibility. Forsyth Tech Community College, for instance, runs a hybrid program where students complete readings and assignments through an online platform on their own schedule, then follow a calendar of required on-campus days for CPR training, lab practice, and clinical rotations.
Where Clinicals Take Place
Every CNA program includes mandatory in-person clinical hours, regardless of whether the classroom portion is online or in person. Clinical rotations typically happen in long-term care facilities or nursing homes, since federal regulations tie CNA training closely to skilled nursing settings. During clinicals, you work with real residents under the supervision of a licensed nurse, practicing the same skills you learned in the lab. This is where training clicks into place: you’ll take actual vital signs, help residents with meals and hygiene, and learn to communicate with people who may have dementia or limited mobility.
Prerequisites and Enrollment
CNA classes have relatively low barriers to entry, which is one reason they’re a popular first step into healthcare. Most programs require you to be at least 16 or 18 years old, depending on the state, and to have a high school diploma or GED (though some states allow enrollment without one). You’ll need to pass a criminal background check. In Texas, for example, applicants must clear a check through the Department of Public Safety and cannot be listed on the state’s Employee Misconduct Registry.
Many programs also require a current CPR certification, a TB test or health screening, and up-to-date immunizations before you start clinicals. Some include CPR training as part of the program itself.
What the Program Costs
CNA training is one of the more affordable healthcare credentials to earn. At Edmonds College in Washington, the total program cost for 2025 comes to roughly $1,670, broken down across tuition, fees, books, and lab costs. That includes about $1,190 in tuition and fees, $98 for textbooks, $380 in lab fees, and around $45 for scrubs. Community colleges and vocational schools generally fall in the $500 to $2,000 range. Private training schools can charge more.
On top of tuition, budget for the certification exam fee (typically $100 to $150), your background check, and any health screenings. Some employers, particularly nursing homes facing staffing shortages, will pay for your CNA training in exchange for a commitment to work at their facility for a set period after certification.
The Certification Exam
Completing the class doesn’t make you certified on its own. You still need to pass your state’s competency evaluation, which has two parts: a written (or oral) exam and a clinical skills test. The written portion consists of 70 multiple-choice questions, 60 of which are scored. If you take the oral version instead, it includes 60 multiple-choice questions read aloud plus 10 reading comprehension questions. The clinical skills test requires you to correctly demonstrate a handful of randomly selected skills from the list you practiced in class, performed on a volunteer or mannequin while an evaluator watches.
Most states give you three attempts to pass. If you don’t pass within that window, you’ll typically need to retake the training program before testing again.
Where You Can Work After Certification
A CNA certification opens doors across a wide range of healthcare settings. Graduates work in nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living facilities, rehabilitation centers, hospices, clinics, home healthcare, adult daycare centers, mental health facilities, and private practices. Your day-to-day responsibilities will vary by setting, but the core work involves monitoring vital signs, assisting patients with bathing, dressing, eating, and using the bathroom, collecting basic health information like height, weight, and medical history, and providing emotional support to patients and their families.
Many people use CNA certification as a stepping stone. Working as a CNA gives you direct patient care experience that strengthens applications to nursing school, and some employers offer tuition assistance for CNAs pursuing an LPN or RN degree.
Choosing a Program
The single most important thing to verify before enrolling is that your program is state-approved. Only graduates of approved programs are eligible to sit for the certification exam and be placed on the state nurse aide registry. Your state’s department of health or board of nursing maintains a list of approved programs. In New Jersey, for instance, you can request that list directly from the Department of Health’s Certification Program. Most state health department websites publish searchable directories online.
Beyond accreditation, compare programs on pass rates (many states publish these), schedule flexibility, clinical site locations, and whether the program includes CPR certification or charges for it separately. If cost is a concern, check whether local nursing homes sponsor free training programs, and ask about financial aid at community colleges.