STATE BOARD TESTING

Upon graduation from a Nurse Aide Training Program in Colorado, students are required to take the CO State Boards. The state exam is a two-part process. It consists of a written exam and a skills exam. PearsonVUE is Colorado’s State Examiner. Since March, PearsonVUE has postponed state boards, but recently they stated they’re going to implement an online, written exam sometime in August 2020. Details TBD.  In the same notice, PearsonVUE also canceled all skills exams in Colorado.

The directive is to keep healthcare workers in the pipeline and nursing schools open. Federal law deems that state board testing in Colorado is the only way for Nurse Aide graduates to be fully licensed as CNAs, however, due to the pandemic, there is now a temporary license available for ALL NATP graduates:

Executive Order D2020 038 (PDF) that allows Nurse Aide Training Program graduates to become temporarily licensed until December 31st, 2020.

  • The unpredictability of the COVID19 Pandemic calls for the expansion of the available healthcare workforce. One way to accomplish this is through temporary licensure. Temporary licensure would be used to license persons with education and training in a profession who are not eligible for licensure due to an inability to sit for the required state board examination.
  • Temporary License would be available to enter the workforce through practice under the direct supervision of a Colorado Licensee, ensuring public protection.
  • The COVID19 pandemic has resulted in the indefinite postponement of examinations. Although many examination have reopened, with the social distancing requirements, the number of seats for each examination has dramatically increased.
  • To accommodate the thousands of new healthcare graduates, otherwise ready to enter the workforce, emergency rules have been adopted to make temporary license available for Nurse Aides.
  • Here is a YouTube Video, better explaining the Executive Order D2020 038.

PearsonVUE Testing Information Details:

  • Pearson VUE will be migrating the written portion of the Colorado Nurse Aide exam to computer based testing (CBT) at Pearson VUE 3rd party test centers in CO this August.
  • This requires significant changes in the program rules and systems as well as the scheduling and testing process.  Candidates will no longer be required to take their first attempt at written and skills together. It will just be the written portion and it will be conducted on a computer.
  • To make this change we will be immediately suspending all CO nurse aide scheduling.  We will also be canceling all exams currently scheduled through December.
  • Once the migration is complete, candidates will be able to schedule their written exam as early as August 1st.  At this time we do not know when skills testing will resume.

CLINICAL TRAINING

The Executive Order has not only temporarily eliminated the required 16-hours of Clinicals, but only for the time being, they’re also allowing training programs to forgo “Clinical Simulations” in place of real-life experience.

Although there is was opportunity to shorten our program hours to the bare bones minimum requirement, our instructors agree as a team, that any additional “workplace exposure” is vital to the overall NATP training experience. We want to continue delivering the same quality of education we’ve offered for over 10 years.