Nursing assistants, who do most work at long-term care facilities, are now scrambling with a new deadline for their certification testing.
Those Registered Nursing Assistants are normally allowed to get a job right out of school and then take their skills tests within 120 days to become certified. That rule was waived during the pandemic because of the in-person nature of the testing and the need for more of them on the job, but now the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are ending that waiver. That gives the more than 5,000 Registered Nursing Assistants until October to pass the test to get certified and keep their jobs. Some have said when they signed up for testing dates, they were given one as far out as March 2023.
Community colleges across Washington are helping the State Health Department with more than 6-dozen, 2-day testing sessions concentrated in areas where the most “NAR”s need the test. You can get more information from the DOH, including a link to testing, here.
Shoreline Community College dean of health occupations and nursing, Mary Burroughs, says it won’t be easy since it’s one-on-one testing. They have to show that they are competent in skills like “hand-washing, personal care, transfers, bathing, clothing, feeding,” Burroughs says, “they have to demonstrate that to us individually, and they have to pass each of those skills.” That’s why the task of testing more than 5,000 of them is daunting, but Burroughs and counterparts at other schools are confident they’ll be able to get most of them tested by the October deadline.
