Prometric calls Florida’s hands-on CNA test the Clinical Skills Test. It is timed. A computer assigns the skills. Two nurses watch you and compare what you do with a list of checkpoints. They are not allowed to teach, coach, or discuss how you did.
Practice at AZ SkillCare is preparation for that test. It is not the test. A skills log, a classroom, and an instructor’s correction are not a score report.
Five skills are scored, and two of them are always included
Prometric’s checklist says there are 22 skills on the Clinical Skills Test. You are not asked to perform all 22. You are scored on five. Every candidate is scored on Handwashing and on Indirect Care. The other three are assigned when your test is scheduled.
The time allowed depends on which skills you draw. The candidate bulletin says the Clinical Skills Test runs from 31 to 40 minutes. You are told the time when you receive your instructions, and you are reminded again before you begin.
You must pass all five skills to pass this part of the exam. You do not have to perform a skill perfectly. You do have to show that you can do it competently.
Handwashing is scored even when nobody tells you to start
On the Clinical Skills Test, candidates are not given instructions to wash their hands. Nurse aides are expected to know that hands are washed before physical contact with a resident. In Florida, one nurse watches your handwashing at the beginning of the first skill, and the other watches it at the end of that first skill. After that, handwashing is scored as part of Indirect Care.
The checkpoints look at the whole sequence, not only at whether the faucet was turned on. They include wetting the hands, applying soap, using friction for at least 20 seconds, cleaning the fronts and backs of the hands, between the fingers, around the cuticles, under the nails, and the wrists, rinsing, drying with a clean paper towel, and ending without recontaminating your hands on the faucet or the sink.
Practice that sequence until you do it without a prompt. Saying “I would wash my hands” is not the skill.
Indirect care is the second skill on every test
Indirect Care is not a separate performance you are walked through. The nurse watches for it while you do each skill. In plain language, the checkpoints ask whether you greet the resident by name, introduce yourself, explain the care before and during the task, ask about preferences, use infection-control measures, ask about comfort, and protect the resident’s rights and safety.
Those behaviors are easy to skip when you are concentrating on the equipment. Practice them on every skill, including the ones you think you already know.
Three more skills are assigned that day
The assigned skills come from the rest of the list. They include care such as walking with a transfer belt, helping with a bedpan, changing linen while the person stays in bed, dressing a weak arm, measuring urine output, feeding a person who is sitting in a chair, taking a radial pulse and respirations, catheter care, foot care, mouth care, perineal care, hand and nail care, a partial bed bath, range-of-motion exercises, and a pivot transfer from bed to wheelchair.
If you test on feeding, the instruction is to feed a resident who is in a chair. You are still responsible for knowing that people are fed in other positions. The written test may ask about those other positions even when the skills test uses the chair.
Learn the procedure from your instructor. The official checkpoints are the scoring mirror, not the lesson. Prometric says the procedure may include more detail than the checkpoint list shows.
You have to do the care
During the test you must actually perform the skill. If the skill uses water, you use water. Care is given to a person playing the resident, or to a mannequin, as the instruction requires. Talking through the steps while standing still does not complete the skill.
You may correct a mistake while you are still performing that skill. You have to tell the nurse you are correcting it, and you have to physically do the correction. Once you say the skill is finished, you cannot go back to an earlier skill. If a safety problem occurs, the nurse addresses it and you cannot correct that checkpoint.
While you wait, you may be asked to play the resident for another candidate. The bulletin lists the skills that may be performed on you, including walking, a pulse, mouth care, a transfer, and a bedpan with clothes left on. If you cannot take part in one of those, tell the nurse when you check in.
The clinical-skills study page and the AZ SkillCare skills log are practice tools. They are not the official checklist, and a completed log is not a passing result.
Review the clinical-skills page, then ask about practice time through CNA Exam Preparation.
