Certified Nursing Assistant classes ongoing at JP Extended Care Facility

At the Jourdain Perpich Extended Care Center (JPECC), Certified Nursing Assistant classes have been offered there for the last two years, and they have graduated almost 30 students.

Marilyn Sundsquist, who is certified with the State Board of Nursing as a state approved trainer, is the CNA instructor, as well as an employee of JPECC for the last four-and-a-half years. She’s been teaching for two years there.

Last year they started out with over 20 applicants, where they first conducted drug testing and background checks, as well as skin tests for TB. If the applicant passed those orientation tests, then they were eligible to take the CNA training class, which is a 80 hour class.

Of that 80 hours, 64 hours is required of classroom training, and hands-on training is conducted with the residents of JPECC for sixteen hours–of which the student has two, 8-hour shifts that they go on the floor with her supervising them.

After that 80 hours is completed, they are taken down to the Northwest Technical College in Bemidji to sign up to take their testing.

Sundsquist said they could complete the 80-hour course in two weeks, but this last summer they conducted training two days per week.

“This enables the CNA students that applied, we also hired them on the floor as on-the-job training,” she said. “As long as they were enrolled in an accredited CNA course, they can work on the floor as students.”

They can work on the floor as students for 4-months. She said they hired about 12 students and worked during the summer months, attending classes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for 6 ½ hour days.

“They worked on the floor weekends and P.M.s and nights and got a lot of training in, which I thought really helped them to gain the experience for being on the floor,” Sundsquist stated. “They get to know the residents, they get to know their habits, they get to a lot of things about how a facility is run. And I do think that helps them with the testing.”

She said the students had to go in and take a written test with sixty tests. A student had to pass that with 70%. Then, a student has to randomly draw out of a hat, five different skills that they have learned during the CNA classes.

“That get’s a little intimidating, number one, the students that actually do the best with that are the students that have had more experience on the floor,” she explained. “For one thing, they’re more relaxed and more confident in their ability. But that is pretty nerve-racking for some of them–they have to do hand-washing, sometimes they have to demonstrate feeding the resident, or giving a bed bath, or taking a pulse, respiration or temperature, weighting the residents.”

She said they gain a lot of the skills they would be using there on the floor as a CNA.

Some of those CNA students also went on for Licensed Practical Nursing certificates.

“And that’s what entices me most about the CNA classes, is that once they’re in a health care setting, watching what jobs are available for people, even if they’re not interested in the nursing profession, they’re also observing and watching the people on Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy, they’re watching the Dietician and get to see what the dietician does,” she said.

She hoped a lot of the CNA students would go on to school. Right now she said she had 3 of the recent CNA students in the LPN program in Bemidji. Those credits they earned with the CNA classes would transfer to Northwest Tech College and was a class they wouldn’t have to retake once they were in college.

The LPN classes usually take about a year-and-a-half. It was an LPN degree, but not an Associate of Arts degree. After one received their LPN license, then a student could obtain a Registered Nurse degree in about another 9 months.

RN classes were available in Thief River and Bemidji. A student who graduated from the RN course would have an A.A. degree. A 4-year RN would require about two more years through Bemidji State University for the B.S. degree in nursing. Usually those classes were one or two days per week for the 4-year RN. It enabled those with an A.A. degree–the timing of the classes and the class load–also to work at the same time one was pursuing further educational goals.

“After teaching the CNAs and having some experience with that, I realize why I went into nursing,” she said. “You do have to be on top of it because people going into health care do it because they like to keep busy, they like a job that pays well, and they also are real ambitions and caring people. The people who do not care about the elders, usually you won’t find them in the CNA classes and they won’t last long.”

In her last class, 12 completed the class. The first time they went for testing, 7 of those 12 passed. But out of those five that didn’t pass, they passed the written test, but they were just having some problems with the skills testing.

“The problem was, they were so nervous–when you go in and actually do hands-on with somebody watching you,” she said. “But they do have two more times that they could go in and retake the test.”

With the CNA license, didn’t necessarily mean they had to work in Red Lake, either. They could go to any facility where CNAs were needed.

Sundsquist said she prefered the CNAs go on to school, continue on and get an education. She also said CNA work was very hard work, it was physically hard for many people because of the lifting.

The majority of those students taking the classes were females, but she said she did have some males, and one male from the last class who graduated and passed his test firs time. This student was now employed at JPECC as a CNA and doing very well.

“I prefer men in the nursing profession, especially with the CNA work,” she said. “Men can lift; men are stronger than some of these women. You see a little 100 pound woman lifting on a 300 pound resident–but they do.’

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