Patient Care students get their CNA’s

The Patient Care academy kids are testing after a long year of training to become a CNA. After learning 40+ skills, which are sets of instructions that could be used in a medical situation, the Patient Care students are finally testing to be able to use them.

The test includes 6 randomly picked skills, each set including hand washing, one vital sign, and 4 other skills that could be anything from giving a resident a complete bed bath, to simply being taking off a pair of gloves. The test usually can take 30 minutes to over an hour, and all skills should be fully completed and passed before the test taker can get their CNA. It can be retaken in the case of a fail, however fails are uncommon.

“Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to go into some sort of medicine … I’ve just kind of always been interested in healing my whole life because I think it’s really cool that one person can literally save the life of another person. It’s almost magical to me.” Said Junior Sydney Trout. She passed the CNA test on March 7th. The Patient Care side of the Health academy opens up opportunity to follow her passion for medicine sooner.

“The first time we went on the floor as a class I literally started crying, I was just so happy to be up there so I’m excited to actually work with patients.” said Trout.

CNA teachers such as Mrs. Chick, Mrs. Dowse, and Mrs. Leaders help to bring the CNA students along to this point, and Leaders herself tests some of the students.

Leaders has been working with healthcare students for 29 years, 11 of which were spent at the academy. Leaders has been a big supporter of academy students.

“[The former academy Principal] called me up, he says ‘Oh we need some help at the academy’, and he said ‘would you be willing to come a couple weeks just to make some recommendations for what we can do to improve,’ and it’s been 11 years.” Leaders said.

This is Leaders last year in health academy, after helping the academy for so long, her last day is Friday, March 10th.

When asked what the most meaningful part of helping students to enter the medical field, Leaders said “We need healthcare people” Leaders said. “You hope you make a difference in the world.”