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.

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

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.

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.

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 realise. 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.

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.