As a practicing CNA for over twenty years, I find that hands on training are the most useful tools to be had in this profession. After completion of all the necessary classroom work at community college in CNA training, the background work seemed to be all that was needed. Although the schooling gives you all the basic skills necessary to fulfill your position, on the job training is where you learn the skills that can save lives. Nothing in a book can ever teach you the compassion that goes into dealing with patients.
Whether dealing with a patient that is in the end stages of a hard fought battle with cancer, or a patient that needs one on one instruction in healthy living, these are things that cannot ever be learned by reading a book. They have to be experienced and felt as communication is made between you and your patient.