10 Essential Characteristics of a CNA

A career as a CNA is not only rewarding but also very challenging. If you wish to become a CNA, you need to have a strong desire and passion to serve the patients in hospitals, clinics and other healthcare facilities. You need to work with devotion to help the patients who need your care and support.

As a CNA, you need to have certain skill sets that will make you successful in the nursing profession. Following are the 10 essential characteristics of a CNA:

1. Compassionate and Caring Nature: When you are in a medical or healthcare profession, then having a caring and compassionate nature becomes one of the indispensable traits that you need to possess. CNAs come in direct contact with the patients on a daily basis. Hence, CNAs need to be of a kind nature to help the patients with their problems.

As a CNA, it is your responsibility to take good care of the patients and listen to them properly if they need something. Showing your compassion will not only make the patients feel better and help them recover fast, but also take you a long way in your medical career. At times, you need to be strong to provide the patients the necessary mental and emotional support to help them in their recovery process.

2. Professional approach: The Certified Nursing Assistants are likely to work in a variety of settings like hospitals, clinics, adult or baby healthcare facilities. They may also require to assist elderly and sick patients or patients who are handicapped. Such patients are likely to be depressed and have lost all their hope of recovery. In such cases, the CNAs need to handle them in a very professional manner to make them feel better.

As a CNA, you are expected to remain calm and at your professional best at all times, even if the patient resort to verbal abuse or behave in an uncooperative manner. You need to follow a professional approach while handling the patients and make sure that you provide high quality care.

3. Hard Working: As a CNA, you are expected to be on your toes all the time. It involves a lot of hard work and dedication on your part. Helping the patients do their daily tasks (such as bathing, dressing, feeding and so on) as well as remembering to give the patients their medicines on time, staying awake during nights or by the patients' side is not an easy task. Your job as a CNA may demand a lot of patience and endurance to be successful in carrying out your duties.

4. Detail-oriented: As a CNA, your job requires you to be really sharp, attentive and detail-oriented. You need to measure and record the patients' vitals such as their blood pressure, blood sugar levels, body temperature and heart rate. This requires a lot of skill. You need to maintain records of these vitals for the doctors reference so that they can decide the course of treatment for the patients.

You also need to ensure that you give the patients the right dosage of medicines as prescribed by the doctor. You also need to note the changes in the health condition of the patients and their response to the treatment so that the further course of action can be decided upon. All these tasks require you to be extremely accurate and detail-oriented.

5. Physically fit: Your job as a CNA may demand a lot of physical endurance from your end. You need to be physically active and really fit to handle your duties and responsibilities as a CNA. You need to be constantly on your toes and work long hours. You also don't have the provision of taking several breaks during your working hours as you need to be by the patient's side most of the time. Thus, you need to be physically very fit.

6. Good Communication: As a CNA, you act as a link between the doctors, senior nurses and the patients. Your communication skills need to extremely good to pass on the right messages to the concerned persons. You have to communicate about the patient's illness to the friends and family members of the patients. It is important that you communicate this information to them in an appropriate manner.

When you are doing any medical procedure, you need to communicate it effectively to the patients in order to make them feel at ease.

7. Sound Judgment: As a CNA, you need to be aware of how to handle emergency situations. You should be in a position to take sound decisions in such situations as everything depends on you at that particular moment. Especially in the absence of doctors or registered nurses, it's your prime responsibility to make sound judgment of the patient's condition and decide what is best for the patient.

8. Adaptable by nature: As a Certified Nursing Assistant, you need to flexible and adaptable by nature. You should be comfortable to work in a variety of settings and under different circumstances.

9. Emotionally stable: As Certified Nursing Assistants, you need to provide mental and emotional support to the patients to help them recover fast. For this reason, you need to be emotionally strong and stable. The patients are passing through a difficult phase in their lives and it is your duty as a CNA to provide emotional support to them and help them be strong and hopeful.

10. Cheerful attitude: As a CNA, the environment that you will be working in will generally be very gloomy. With patients suffering from various kinds of diseases, the atmosphere can only be made a little happier if you have a cheerful attitude. You need to be happy all the time, display a positive attitude and remember to always wear a smile so that the patients feel happier when you are around. This cheerful attitude of yours will help them handle their bad days a little more comfortably.

These were some of the essential characteristics that CNAs need to possess in order to be successful in the nursing profession. So, if you possess the zeal to serve the patients and have all these characteristics, then the CNA career may be the right option for you.