healthcare

On Losing the Right to Work as an STNA

By Abed Osman · October 23, 2014

A note on terminology: this article was written before October 2025, when Ohio renamed the State Tested Nurse Aide (STNA) credential to Certified Nurse Aide (CNA). Same training, same state exam, new name. See STNA vs CNA vs Nurse Aide Trainee for what changed.
On Losing the Right to Work as an STNA

Once an individual is on the Nurse Aide Registry, he or she can lose his or her right to work. In order to maintain eligibility to work, an individual must provide nursing and nursing-related services for monetary compensation within twenty-four months after he or she last met the requirements for being listed on the Registry. An approved training program such as Alia Healthcare Services must re-train and re-test an individual who does not meet this requirement in order for the individual to be re-listed on the Registry as being eligible to work.

Furthermore, the individual must provide at least seven and one-half consecutive hours or eight hours in a forty-eight hour period of nursing and nursing-related services during the twenty-four month period in order to maintain eligibility to work as an STNA in the state of Ohio.

The eight hours may be divided up as long as the nurse aide works at least the required eight hours within the twenty-four months. For example, a nurse aide may count the time spent helping to feed residents if the aide generally works in another area of the facility as long as the nurse aide is providing nursing and nursing-related services. However, the facility must provide documentation verifying that the eight hour requirement has been met.

“Nursing and nursing-related services” may include performing services somewhere other than in a long-term care facility. In order to maintain eligibility to work, an individual may provide nursing or nursing-related services for payment in any health care facility, as long as he or she does so for at least seven and one-half consecutive hours or eight hours in a forty-eight hour period within twenty-four months after the individual last met the requirements for being listed in the Registry.

A nurse aide may not use a W-2 form to prove that he or she provided nursing and nursing related services for monetary compensation in the last two years. A W-2 does not tell the Registry what your job duties were; it only states that you worked for compensation. For this reason, the Registry does not accept W-2 forms as proof that an individual provided nursing and nursing related services for monetary compensation.

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