CNA Job Description: Template, Duties, Requirements & Pay (2026)

A certified nursing assistant (CNA) — also written certified nurse assistant, and called a nurse aide in the federal rules — provides hands-on daily care to patients and residents — bathing, dressing, feeding, repositioning, taking vitals — under the supervision of an LPN or RN. Below is a copy-paste CNA job description template, the requirements that actually matter, and what it costs to reach CNAs on social media, drawn from 32 Boostpoint campaigns.

What a CNA does

CNAs do the physical work of care. In a skilled nursing facility, one CNA is typically responsible for 8–15 residents on a shift: getting them up, washed and dressed, helping at meals, toileting, turning bed-bound residents every two hours, recording intake and output, and flagging changes to the nurse. In hospitals the title is often patient care technician or nursing assistant, and the work adds vitals, blood glucose checks and transport. In assisted living it leans toward companionship and medication reminders.

About 35% of CNAs work in nursing care facilities, 33% in hospitals and 11% in assisted living, per the BLS. It's a state-certified role: candidates complete a state-approved training program (75 hours federally; many states require 100–180) and pass a competency exam to be listed on the state nurse aide registry. That registry check is non-negotiable for any facility that bills Medicare or Medicaid. When the posting isn't filling shifts, social media job advertising reaches CNAs who are working elsewhere and scrolling Facebook, not job boards.

CNA job description template

Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and cut anything that doesn't apply. It's written the way applicants read — pay, schedule and location first — because those are the three things people screen on before they read a duty list.

Requirements: what's required, what's preferred, and what kills applications

Almost every CNA posting lists the same requirements, and about half of them are copied from a template rather than checked against the job. Here's what each one does to your applicant flow.

How to customize it for your setting

Nursing home (skilled nursing facility)

Lead with resident ratio and consistent assignment; they matter more to experienced CNAs than anything else on the page. If your ratio is above 12, don't state it — fix it or say “manageable assignments” and be ready to discuss.

Hospital

Use the title your applicants search for — many hospitals post “Patient Care Tech” and lose CNAs searching “CNA jobs.” Consider posting under both titles. Emphasize the clinical skills they'll add (phlebotomy, EKG) and any CNA-to-nursing pathway.

Assisted living and memory care

Lower acuity, more relationship. Say so. Memory care needs candidates who are calm under repetition; ask one screening question about dementia experience rather than requiring a certification.

Home health

CNAs in home care work alone. Cover mileage, scheduling autonomy and whether shifts are consecutive. See our home care agency recruiting data for how those campaigns differ.

If you are hiring CNAs rather than describing the job, the recruiting side — where they are, what the ad has to say, and what an applicant costs to reach — is on our CNA recruitment page. Before a new aide works a shift, check the state registry: CNA verification walks through it.

Writing the ad version

The job description above is for your ATS and careers page. The ad that runs on social is shorter and answers three questions in the first two lines: how much, what shift, where. Something like: “CNAs — $21–$24/hr + $2 night differential. 12-hour nights, 3 days a week, consistent assignment. [Facility], [City]. Apply in 60 seconds, no résumé needed.” Then two or three knockout questions on the form — certification state, shift availability, distance — and nothing else.

Every added field costs completions. In our data the employers who ask only what genuinely disqualifies someone convert at nearly double the rate of those who front-load document uploads and long applications. Our frontline hiring benchmarks cover application completion by role.

Nurse aide, nursing assistant, CNA: one credential under four names

The federal rules that create this credential do not use the word CNA at all. A state approved program under 42 CFR 483.151 to 483.154 is a nurse aide training and competency evaluation program, and the list an employer is required to check before hiring into a Medicare or Medicaid certified facility is the state nurse aide registry. Employers say CNA. Hospitals often post patient care technician. Candidates search certified nursing assistant, certified nurse assistant, nursing assistant and certified nursing aide, more or less interchangeably.

Two practical consequences. First, verify on the registry rather than on the job title: a candidate describing themselves as a nursing assistant may or may not hold the certification, and the registry is the only thing that settles it. Second, the phrase you put in the posting should be the one your local market searches, which is usually CNA in long term care and patient care technician in hospitals. If you recruit for both settings, run both titles rather than picking one and hoping.

Certified nurse assistant or certified nursing assistant?

Both. “Certified nurse assistant” and “certified nursing assistant” describe the same credential and the same job, and the two spellings are used interchangeably by employers, schools and candidates. There is no regulatory difference between them, and a certified nurse assistant job description is a certified nursing assistant job description — the template above works for either heading.

If you are choosing which to put in a posting, use whichever your state registry uses, because that is the phrase your candidates typed when they looked up their own license status. Then write the other spelling once in the body so search matches both.

One title that is not the same job: patient care technician. A PCT is normally a CNA who has also been trained in phlebotomy and EKG, and hospitals pay for that difference. If your posting asks for blood draws, you are hiring a PCT and should say so — see the patient care technician job description template.

Nurse aide job description

“Nurse aide” is the regulator’s word for this job, and a nurse aide job description written for a Medicare or Medicaid certified nursing facility has a handful of lines a generic CNA template leaves out. The duties are the ones in the template above. What changes is that several requirements are set by federal rule rather than by the employer, and stating them correctly tells an experienced aide that whoever wrote the posting knows how the role works.

• Training. A state-approved nurse aide training program must run no less than 75 clock hours, including at least 16 hours of supervised practical training (42 CFR 483.152). Many states require more, so write your state’s number, not the federal floor.
• Registry verification before the first shift. The facility must receive registry verification that the person has met the competency requirements before allowing them to serve as a nurse aide, with limited exceptions for people in a state-approved training program and for newly certified aides not yet on the registry (42 CFR 483.35(d)). Ask for the registry number on the application so the check runs before the interview, not after the offer.
• The four-month limit. A facility may not use anyone as a nurse aide full time for more than four months unless they are competent and have completed a training and competency evaluation program (42 CFR 483.35(d)). If you hire aides into paid training, the posting should say certification is expected inside that window.
• The 24-month lapse. Someone who has gone a continuous 24 months without providing nursing services for pay must complete a new training and competency evaluation program or a new competency evaluation (42 CFR 483.35(d)). Returners with an old certificate are worth recruiting; the screen just needs to ask when they last worked as an aide.
• In-service training. Facilities must give each nurse aide no less than 12 hours of in-service training a year, including dementia management and resident abuse prevention (42 CFR 483.95(g)), and review each aide’s performance yearly. That is an obligation you already carry, so list the paid in-service hours in the benefits block and get recruiting credit for it.

These rules govern certified nursing facilities. In assisted living and private-pay home care, the state sets the requirements, and a nurse aide job description for those settings should cite the state rule instead.

Nurses assistant, nursing assistant, CNA: which title to post under

Three names, one job, and the one you put in the job title changes who finds it. Certified nursing assistant is the formal credential. Nursing assistant is the occupation as the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes it. Nurses assistant is how a very large number of candidates actually type it into a search box — and a posting that never uses the phrase is invisible to them.

The practical answer for a job board or careers page is to lead with CNA, because that is what the credentialed candidate calls themselves, and to use nursing assistant and nurses assistant naturally in the body so the posting matches all three. It costs nothing and it is the single cheapest change available on a nursing assistant job description.

The distinction that matters operationally is different from the spelling. A certified nursing assistant holds an active state certification; a nursing assistant may be trained, may be mid-certification, or may be working in a setting that does not require it. With roughly 203,300 openings a year in the occupation, an automatic rejection of everyone without the certificate in hand is a more expensive policy than most employers realize. Decide deliberately whether your requirement is the certificate today or the certificate within 90 days, and say which in the posting.

Nursing assistant job responsibilities

"Nursing assistant job responsibilities" is the highest-volume way this job gets searched, and it is usually typed by two people at once: a scheduler writing a posting, and a CNA checking whether your job matches the one they already have. The answer that satisfies both is a responsibilities list tied to a shift, not a list of competencies.

On a day shift in a skilled nursing facility, the responsibilities are: morning care for an assigned group of residents — bathing, dressing, grooming, oral care and toileting; transfers and repositioning on a schedule, with the lift equipment your facility actually uses; vital signs, weights and intake and output recorded before the end of shift; meal set-up and feeding assistance for residents who need it; answering call lights and reporting changes in condition to the charge nurse; keeping rooms and equipment clean and stocked; and charting everything in the EHR before you leave. Evening shift shifts the weight to meals, toileting rounds and settling; nights are rounds, repositioning, incontinence care and documentation.

Two responsibilities belong in the posting and are almost always left out. The first is the assignment size — how many residents on each shift — because it is the single number CNAs use to compare employers, and leaving it out reads as an answer. The second is what the CNA is not responsible for: medication administration is outside the nurse aide scope in most states unless the person holds a separate medication aide credential. Saying so tells an experienced CNA that whoever wrote the posting understands the job.

The responsibilities do not change with the title. Nurse aide, nursing assistant, nurses assistant and CNA are the same credential under four names, so a responsibilities list written for one is correct for all of them — the choice of title is a search and targeting decision, covered further up this page.

CNA duties and responsibilities by shift

The duties list in the template is the same on every shift; what changes is the weight of each item, and a posting that says which shift it is hiring for should say which duties dominate it.

• Day shift: morning care and dressing, meal assistance at breakfast and lunch, the heaviest documentation load, and transport to therapy and appointments. The busiest shift for resident contact and the one most new CNAs are trained on.
• Evening shift: dinner assistance, evening care and toileting, getting residents ready for bed, and closer observation as late-day confusion becomes more common in memory care. Usually a lighter ratio of charting to hands-on care.
• Night shift: scheduled repositioning, incontinence care, safety and fall-risk rounds, vital signs on a schedule, and early-morning care before day shift arrives. Lower resident contact, higher responsibility per aide, and in most facilities the hardest shift to staff, which is why a night differential belongs in the first line of the ad.

In a nursing home, all three shifts carry the core responsibility that separates a CNA from other aide roles: reporting changes in a resident’s condition to the charge nurse promptly, because the CNA is usually the person who sees the change first.

Hospital CNA, nursing home CNA: where the job is harder and where it pays better

Employers assume hospital CNA work pays more than a nursing home does. In May 2025 it did not. BLS puts the median for Nursing Assistants (SOC 31-1131) at $20.32 an hour, $42,260 a year across 1,448,910 jobs, and the setting breakdown runs the other way from the assumption:

Skilled nursing pays CNAs about 65 cents an hour more than hospitals do — roughly $1,350 a year — and assisted living is the low payer of the three, $1.68 below skilled nursing. If you are a hospital writing a CNA or patient care technician posting and competing with the nursing home down the road, you are not competing from a pay advantage. You are competing on ratio, on schedule, on whether the shift ends when it says it ends, and on the training and progression a hospital can offer that a nursing home usually cannot.

What actually changes in the job description

Hospital CNA / PCT. Faster admission and discharge turnover, a wider mix of acuity, more equipment, more documentation in the EHR, frequent transport and procedure prep, and a care team that changes with the unit. Name the unit in the posting — med-surg, telemetry, ED, ICU step-down, float pool are materially different jobs — and give the ratio. Say whether phlebotomy or EKG is expected, and whether you train and certify for it, because that is the difference between a CNA posting and a PCT posting.

Nursing home CNA. A consistent assignment, the same residents each shift, and a much heavier ADL load: bathing, dressing, toileting, transfers, feeding assistance, repositioning and charting on a fixed round schedule. The relationships are the reason people stay and the load is the reason they leave, so both belong in the posting. Give the resident count per aide by shift, say what the lift equipment situation actually is, and say whether the schedule rotates or holds.

In either setting, the line that moves applications is the number: residents or patients per aide on the shift you are hiring for. It is the first thing an experienced CNA asks, almost no posting answers it, and answering it filters in the people who can do the job at that ratio rather than the ones who find out on day three.

Hospital nursing assistant and STNA job descriptions

Hospital nursing assistant job description

A hospital nursing assistant job description differs from a nursing home one in who sets the requirements. The federal nurse aide training, registry and four-month rules quoted above sit in the long-term care requirements (42 CFR part 483) and govern certified nursing facilities. A hospital sets its own requirements within state law, which is why some hospitals hire nursing assistants without a state certification and train them, and others require the CNA or post the role as patient care technician. Decide which you are doing and say it in the first lines: “Active [state] CNA required,” or “No certification required, paid training provided.” Candidates who hold the certificate and candidates who do not will both read that line first.

The duties to list for a nursing assistant in a hospital are the ones in the “Hospital CNA / PCT” section above: ADLs, vital signs, intake and output, blood glucose checks where your policy allows, transport, admission and discharge turnover, and EHR documentation. Add the unit, the patients per assistant on your shift, whether the role floats, and whether phlebotomy or EKG is expected. Pay is not an advantage to lead with here: BLS puts the May 2025 median for nursing assistants in general medical and surgical hospitals at $20.02 an hour, below the $20.67 in nursing care facilities, so lead with schedule, ratio and the path to nursing school instead.

STNA job description (state tested nurse aide)

STNA, for state tested nurse aide, is the title Ohio employers and candidates have long used for this credential, and a state tested nurse aide job description is the CNA job description on this page with the Ohio title in the heading. The Ohio Department of Health’s own nurse aide page now says that an individual listed on the Nurse Aide Registry in good standing “is referred to as a certified nurse aide (CNA) in Ohio,” and that training programs “must be no less than 75 hours,” including 16 hours of clinical experience in a skilled nursing facility.

If you hire in Ohio, use both titles: “STNA / CNA” in the job title field and both again in the body, because experienced aides still search for STNA. The requirement line should ask for good standing on the Ohio Nurse Aide Registry, and the application should ask for the registry number rather than a certificate upload. Aides moving from another state can transfer their registry status, so “out-of-state CNAs welcome” is worth adding. Our CNA reciprocity guide covers how that works.

Restorative aide job description

A restorative aide (often called a restorative nursing assistant, or RNA) is a CNA assigned to the nursing home’s restorative nursing program: the scheduled range of motion, walking, transfer, bed mobility, dressing, eating and communication practice that keeps residents from losing function, usually after they finish physical, occupational or speech therapy. The role exists because of how CMS counts the work. In the October 2026 MDS 3.0 RAI Manual (item O0500), a restorative program is coded only when the technique or practice was performed “for a total of at least 15 minutes during the 24-hour period,” with measurable objectives and interventions in the care plan, periodic evaluation by a licensed nurse, aides “trained in the techniques,” and supervision by an RN or LPN. Groups with more than four residents per supervising helper do not count.

That gives the restorative aide job description its duties:

• Carry out each resident’s restorative plan: passive and active range of motion, splint or brace application, bed mobility, transfer and walking programs, dressing and grooming practice, eating and swallowing programs
• Record minutes and the resident’s response for every session on the restorative flow sheet, on the day it happens
• Write progress notes for the supervising nurse to review and countersign where your state allows
• Keep groups at four residents or fewer per aide
• Report pain, skin changes, falls or decline to the nurse and flag residents who may need a therapy referral

For requirements, ask for an active CNA certification and say whether you provide the restorative training or expect it. Restorative roles are often filled from your own CNA staff, and if yours is a day-shift, weekday schedule, say so in the first line of the posting: it is a schedule many floor CNAs would move for.

What CNA means in a job posting, and the role of a CNA on the care team

CNA stands for certified nursing assistant. In a job posting it means one specific thing: the person has completed a state-approved nurse aide training and competency evaluation program and is listed in good standing on that state's nurse aide registry. It is a credential, not a job level, which is why the same three letters appear on postings from nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living communities and home health agencies.

The federal rule behind the credential is written around the work, not the title. Under 42 CFR 483.5, a nurse aide is "any individual providing nursing or nursing-related services to residents in a facility," including people supplied through an agency or contract, but not a licensed health professional, a registered dietitian, an unpaid volunteer, or a paid feeding assistant. That definition is the role of a CNA in one sentence: the hands-on care between the licensed nurse's assessment and the resident's day.

In practice the role has three parts, and a job description that names all three reads as written by someone who knows the job:

• Direct care. Bathing, dressing, toileting, feeding assistance, transfers and repositioning for an assigned group of residents or patients.
• Observation and reporting. Vital signs, weights, intake and output, and telling the charge nurse when something changes. The CNA is usually the first person to notice.
• Documentation. Charting the care given before the end of the shift.

What the role is not matters as much for the posting. A CNA works under the supervision of an LPN or RN, and medication administration generally sits outside the nurse aide role; where a state allows aides to pass medications, it requires a separate medication aide credential, so check your state before listing it. The duties by setting and by shift are set out in the sections above; the CNA recruitment guide covers how to reach people who already hold the credential.

Building a promotion path off the floor? The med tech job description covers the certified medication aide role — the usual next step for a CNA, and the one where paying for the certificate turns a scarce-credential search into an ordinary CNA campaign.

Pay, employment and outlook figures: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (Nursing Assistants and Orderlies) and O*NET OnLine, 2025 wage data. Cost-per-applicant figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, 32 CNA campaign-months. Last updated August 2026.