Certified Nurse Aide 1

For over ten-thousand years, there have been healers treating patients throughout all corners of the world. These healers have always relied upon assistance from others, and such assistance has often been provided by friends, apprentices, or even members of the patient's or healer's family. The one thing they have always shared is the "compassion" and "desire" to care for others. Often as not, those providing the assistance have gone on to become healers themselves . . . and therein lies the roots of the "nursing assistant".

Nurses and nurse aides appear throughout America history, having served in virtually all frontier settlements and in every war. They did, and still do, come from all walks of life, regardless of gender, heritage, religion, wealth or education. Their role has been, and still is, so important that they are often referred to as the "Angels of Mercy".

In many areas of the country, the terms "Certified Nurse Aide" and "Certified Nursing Assistant" are used interchangeably and both use the abbreviation of "CNA". In either case, they have completed formal skills and knowledge based training programs that have been approved by the State and they have taken and passed a State exam to receive official certification as a CNA. Becoming a CNA therefore requires a decision and serious commitment to learn these formal skills and proper techniques through knowledge based training programs such as the Front Range Nurse Aide Training Program (approved by the Colorado State Board of Nursing).

Although we do not grant the actual "certification" (the "C" in CNA), we do fulfill the Colorado State training requirements, and in doing so, equip most students with the ability to take, understand and pass the Colorado State exams that are required to become a CNA!

Once they are certified, most CNAs work as paid employees on a “career path” to pursue additional training. As a result, they often become nurses, doctors and even administrators and directors of major medical facilities.