Folsom Lake College’s Certified Nurse Assistant course is an 8-week long course that provides students with the necessary skills and knowledge to prepare to become a Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA). Students successfully completing the course become eligible to take the State of California Nurse Assistant Certification exam.
The next cohort of the CNA course begins on March 16, 2021. If you are already a student, or have previously attended college in the Los Rios Community College District, you will enroll in the class as you would enroll in any other class at FLC. Otherwise, you will first apply to be a student at the college.
There are no prerequisites.
The course takes 8 weeks.
Yes, as long as you participate and meet the requirements of the class you will be able to take your state CNA exam to become certified.
Not yet, but please keep checking our schedule, as the program may expand its offerings in the future.
View our Get started and Apply section for directions. If you are a current or former LRCCD student, you will register as you would for any other course.
- The CNA program does not have a stand-alone application.
- Instead of a deadline, there’s an enrollment appointment period/window based on your priority type. This may be familiar to you if you’ve taken classes before at a Los Rios Community College. Simply enroll in the class, NURSE 100, as you would enroll in any other class at FLC.
- This enrollment checklist is helpful to keep handy.
The CNA program does not have a stand-alone application. There is, however, an application associated with the California Department of Public Health, CDPH-283B. If this is the application that you are referring to, that particular form is filled out during the first class meeting. There is no action that you need to take at this time.
The main difference that I'm aware of between the ARC and FLC Nurse 100 is the prerequisite of Medical Terminology. You may take either class with the same result at the end. Some students may not want to drive all the way out to Placerville so please consider this before making your decision.
Students admitted to the program will need to document the following requirements:
- Proof of physical exam and health history
- Proof of negative tuberculin skin test, or if positive, proof of inactive TB chest x-ray
- Proof of having a current season influenza vaccine
Each of the above must be no older than 3 months.
Because the above requirements are contingent on a variety of factors, you do not have to take action on these items at this time. The one exception is the current season influenza vaccine. If you have not already done so, get your flu shot and retain documentation.
You will need to be able to pass California Department of Public Health fingerprinting, which is facilitated through the college.
You will receive instructions from your instructor and fill out the 283B form together on a Lab day.
Upon completion of the course, you will then be eligible to take the State of California Nurse Assistant Certification Examination through the CDPH. Once you have your results, you are ready to enter the workforce.
CDPH (California Department of Public Health) has created a temporary standard for us to follow in order to allow students to still become certified without any actual clinical experience. We know this is not ideal, but in the light of current events it made the most sense to keep our elderly patients safe. For the spring semester we are currently planning on attending clinicals at 2 sites in Placerville. The schedule will be posted on the FLC website very soon. If for some reason the clinical site changes their minds or there is another wave of the pandemic then we will go back to the previous format that CDPH laid out for us
Folsom Lake College partners with Sacramento Employment Training Agency (SETA) to help place completers in jobs related to their field of study. Mohsen Ghahremani is our SETA Jobs Developer, and can be reached at GhahreM@losrios.edu, (916) 584-2383.