CNA Basic Nursing Skills Explained (35% of the Written Test)

More than a third of the CNA written test is one content area. And one rule answers a surprising amount of it. Basic Nursing Skills is thirty-five percent of the exam. That is the biggest single slice, bigger than activities of daily living, bigger than anything else.

It is mostly two things: vital signs, and infection control. Start with the rule, because it decides more questions than any fact you could memorize. As a nurse aide, you measure and you report. You never diagnose, and you never medicate.

That sounds obvious until you see how the exam uses it. The wrong answers are almost always someone doing slightly too much. Interpreting a number. Telling a resident what is wrong with them.

Handing over a pill. All of those are outside your scope, no matter how right they might seem. Here is one. You measure a resident's blood pressure at one hundred sixty-eight over ninety-six.

What do you do? Report the reading to the nurse. Ignore it, because one reading does not matter. Give the resident a blood pressure pill.

Or tell the resident they have high blood pressure. Report it to the nurse. Ignoring an abnormal value is neglect. Giving medication is not in your scope.

And telling the resident they have high blood pressure is diagnosing, which is also not yours. You measured it, so you report it. That is the whole job on this question. Which means you do need the normal ranges, because you cannot report abnormal if you do not know what normal is.

For an adult: temperature around ninety-seven to ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit. Pulse sixty to one hundred. Respirations twelve to twenty a minute. Blood pressure below one hundred twenty over eighty.

Anything outside those, or anything that has changed from this resident's usual, gets reported. Now the second pillar. Infection control. And the single highest-yield habit in the entire job is hand hygiene, before and after every resident contact.

Not instead of gloves. In addition to gloves. But there is one exception you must know. Alcohol gel does not kill C diff spores.

So if a resident has C diff, or your hands are visibly soiled, it has to be soap and running water, scrubbing at least twenty seconds. Try that one. A resident has C diff. You remove your gloves.

How do you clean your hands? Alcohol sanitizer only. Soap and running water. A dry paper towel.

Or an antiseptic wipe on the palms. Soap and running water. The spores are physically washed off, because alcohol cannot kill them. This is the most commonly tested exception in infection control, and if you remember only one exception, make it this one.

Last piece. Personal protective equipment has an order, and the exam tests it both directions. Putting it on: gown, then mask, then goggles, then gloves last, so the gloves pull over the gown cuffs and seal your wrists. Taking it off, gloves come off first, because they are the dirtiest thing you are wearing.

So: gloves on last, gloves off first. That one line covers most PPE questions in either direction. One to finish. You have just given perineal care to one resident and you are about to help a second.

What do you do with your gloves? Wipe them with sanitizer and reuse. Keep them on until your break. Wash the gloved hands and keep them.

Or remove them, do hand hygiene, and put on new gloves. Pause if you want. Remove them, hand hygiene, new gloves. Gloves are single use, always.

You never wash or reuse them, and you do hand hygiene after removing them, because germs get through tiny defects in the glove. So to recap. Basic Nursing Skills is thirty-five percent of your test. You measure and report, never diagnose, never medicate.

Know the normal adult ranges so you can spot abnormal. Hand hygiene every contact, and soap and water for C diff. And gloves on last, gloves off first. Practice these with real CNA questions, free at quibank.com/en/cna.