Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) — Health Occupations Credentialing (HOC), inside the agency’s Survey, Certification and Credentialing Commission. HOC certifies nurse aides, approves the training courses and the instructors, prescribes and gives the state examination, and maintains the Kansas Nurse Aide Registry. Its office is at 503 S Kansas Ave., Topeka, KS 66603-3404. The Kansas State Board of Nursing licenses nurses and has no role in nurse aide certification. administers certified nursing assistant licensing in Kansas. Every figure below is verified against the board’s own official pages and dated. Who must personally hold a credential — the contractor, the business, or the individual worker — is set out under Requirements.
What it’s called
Kansas’s own term is CERTIFIED NURSE AIDE, abbreviated CNA in KDADS’s own course listings (‘CNA - 90-Hour’, ‘CNA Refresher’, ‘CNA Instructor Manual’). ‘Certified nursing assistant’, the phrase used in most of the country, maps to the same credential; Kansas statute never uses it. The statute’s operative phrase is longer and worth knowing because it is how Kansas actually defines the job: ‘unlicensed employees working in an adult care home… who provide direct, individual care to residents and who do not administer medications to residents.’ The public record is the KANSAS NURSE AIDE REGISTRY, maintained by KDADS. The programme that runs it is HEALTH OCCUPATIONS CREDENTIALING (HOC), a unit inside KDADS’s SURVEY, CERTIFICATION AND CREDENTIALING COMMISSION — three nested levels, department, commission and unit, all of which appear in KDADS’s own navigation and in its document paths. NATCEP, the Nurse Aide Training and Competency Evaluation Program, is the federal term Kansas uses for the training-and-testing programme; KDADS publishes a ‘NATCEP Checklist’ for course approval. Distinguish four adjacent Kansas credentials that share the same office: CERTIFIED MEDICATION AIDE (CMA, a 75-hour course with an update course), HOME HEALTH AIDE (HHA, 20 hours, with a ‘Trainee II’ document of competency), PAID NUTRITION ASSISTANT (at least 8 hours) and ADULT CARE HOME OPERATOR. One more Kansas-specific item: KDADS publishes an ‘OTAPTA Nurse Aide Bridge Course Outline’ — a bridge route for occupational and physical therapy professionals. ‘CNA license’ is a folk term; Kansas certifies, and KDADS’s own renewal machinery for licences covers dietitians, operators, adult care home administrators, speech-language pathologists and audiologists, not nurse aides.
License types & fees
| Type | Notes | Who Its For |
|---|---|---|
| Certified Nurse Aide (CNA) — certification issued by KDADS and recorded on the Kansas Nurse Aide Registry | The 90-hour course is the standard route; KDADS lists it in its own course catalogue as 'CNA - 90-Hour'. The credential is a CERTIFICATION and the registry is the public record of it — KDADS describes its own registry site as the authoritative one: 'Kansas Nurse Aide Registry - This website is considered primary source verification. The registry information on the website is real-time with the registry database.' The registry check is a condition on the EMPLOYER as well as the worker: 'No adult care home shall use an individual working as a certified nurse aide in an adult care home who provides direct, individual care to residents and who does not administer medications unless the facility has inquired of the state registry as to information contained in the registry concerning the individual' (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(7)). | An unlicensed person who provides direct, individual care to residents of a Kansas adult care home and who does not administer medications. Kansas builds the requirement around that job description rather than around a job title: the statute reaches 'unlicensed employees working in an adult care home... who provide direct, individual care to residents and who do not administer medications to residents' (K.S.A. 39-936(c)). |
| The 40-hour entry block — a statutory stage inside the course, not a separate credential | Kansas lets a facility put an untrained person on the floor only after a defined block of training, and then only on a clock. The licensing agency shall require such an employee 'to complete successfully 40 hours of training in basic resident care skills', and 'Any unlicensed employee who has not completed at least 40 hours of the certified nurse aide training approved by the secretary for aging and disability services or who is not making progress to complete the course of education and training required by the secretary for aging and disability services... within four months following completion of such 40 hours shall not provide direct, individual care to residents' (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(1)). The 40 hours are not a stand-alone qualification: 'The 40 hours of training required in this section shall be a part of an approved certified nurse aide training course.' They must be performed 'under the general supervision of a course supervisor', and may be 'prepared and administered by an adult care home, hospital, as defined in K.S.A. 65-425, and amendments thereto, hospice or program for all-inclusive care for the elderly or by any other qualified course sponsor.' | A newly hired unlicensed employee who has not yet completed, and is not yet enrolled in, an approved certified nurse aide course. |
| Challenging the examination without taking a particular course | Kansas writes this into the statute rather than leaving it to policy: 'The licensing agency shall not require unlicensed employees working in an adult care home who provide direct, individual care to residents and who do not administer medications to residents to enroll in any particular approved course of instruction as a condition to the taking of an examination, but the secretary for aging and disability services shall prepare guidelines for the preparation and administration of courses of instruction and shall approve or disapprove courses of instruction' (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(3)). KDADS operationalises it with a form on its Applications & Forms page called 'Documentation of Training for Challenging Test'. | A person who believes their existing training already meets the standard. |
| CNA Refresher course — the route back after a long gap | The duty falls on the employer: 'The adult care home shall require any certified nurse aide working in an adult care home to complete an approved refresher course if such employee: (i) Provides direct, individual care to residents; (ii) does not administer medications; and (iii) since passing the examination required under paragraph (2), has had a continuous period of 24 consecutive months when the certified nurse aide has not provided direct, individual care to residents' (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(8)(A)). KDADS approves refresher courses, lists them in its course catalogue as 'CNA Refresher', and publishes a set of refresher documents for sponsors — CNA Refresher Course FAQs, CNA Refresher Course Instructions - Guidelines, CNA Refresher Course Roster, and a CNA Refresher Update Certification Form. | A certified nurse aide who has gone 24 consecutive months without providing direct, individual care to residents. |
| Certified Medication Aide (CMA), Home Health Aide (HHA), paid nutrition assistant, activities director and social services designee — separate Kansas credentials on the same programme | KDADS runs them all through Health Occupations Credentialing and publishes the course lengths side by side: 'CNA - 90-Hour; CNA Refresher; CMA Update; CMA - 75-Hour; HHA - 20-Hour; Activities Director / Social Services Designee; Nutrition Assistant; Operator.' The nutrition assistant has its own statutory floor: 'Training for paid nutrition assistants shall consist of at least eight hours of instruction, at a minimum, that meets the requirements of 42 C.F.R. § 483.160' (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(1)(C)). This record covers the nurse aide only. | Not covered by this record. |
Who does NOT need this license — exemptions
KANSAS’S CARVE-OUTS SIT INSIDE THE DEFINITION OF WHO THE REQUIREMENT REACHES RATHER THAN IN A SEPARATE EXEMPTION LIST. The requirement runs to ‘unlicensed employees working in an adult care home… who provide direct, individual care to residents and who do not administer medications to residents’ (K.S.A. 39-936(c)), and each qualifier removes someone: a LICENSED employee is outside it by definition; a worker who ADMINISTERS MEDICATIONS falls under the certified medication aide credential instead; and a worker who does not provide direct, individual care to residents is not reached at all. THE SETTING MATTERS TOO — the statute is written about ADULT CARE HOMES, which K.S.A. 39-923(a)(1) defines as ‘any nursing facility, nursing facility for mental health, intermediate care facility for people with intellectual disability, assisted living facility, residential healthcare facility, home plus, boarding care home and adult day care facility, all of which are classifications of adult care homes and are required to be licensed by the secretary for aging and disability services.’ AN EXPRESS EXCEPTION EXISTS FOR SOME INTELLECTUAL-DISABILITY FACILITIES: the requirement applies ’except an adult care home licensed for the provision of services to people with intellectual disability that has been granted an exception by the secretary for aging and disability services upon a finding by the licensing agency that an approved training program for certified nurse aides is in place for such adult care home’ — a facility-level exception granted case by case, not a blanket one, and it appears in both K.S.A. 39-936(c)(1) and (c)(2). PAID NUTRITION ASSISTANTS ARE A DIFFERENT CREDENTIAL WITH A DIFFERENT FLOOR: ‘Training for paid nutrition assistants shall consist of at least eight hours of instruction, at a minimum, that meets the requirements of 42 C.F.R. § 483.160’, and 39-936(c)(2) expressly excludes from the course-and-examination requirement those ‘who do not meet the definition of paid nutrition assistant as defined in K.S.A. 39-923(a).’ ON THE CRIMINAL-RECORD SIDE, K.S.A. 39-970 separately exempts ’licensed or registered professional service providers, volunteers and certain employees’ and ‘certain persons in custody of the secretary of corrections’; the precise scope of those exemptions turns on the section’s own text and on KDADS rules, and this record does not restate them beyond naming them. NOT FOUND on 2026-08-16 in any Kansas source read: any exemption for nursing students, for family caregivers, or for aides working in hospitals or home health outside the adult care home definition.
Fees
KANSAS AUTHORISES A FEE BUT DOES NOT PUBLISH ITS AMOUNT ANYWHERE THIS RECORD COULD READ. The statute creates the charge and routes the money: ‘The secretary for aging and disability services shall fix, charge and collect a fee to cover all or any part of the costs of the licensing agency under this subsection. The fee shall be fixed by rules and regulations of the secretary,’ remitted to the state treasurer under K.S.A. 75-4215 and credited ’to the health occupations credentialing fee fund created by K.S.A. 39-979’ (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(5)). That fund exists and is administered by the secretary (K.S.A. 39-979(a)). The amount lives in rules and regulations that could not be read as of August 16, 2026, and KDADS’s published fee documents cover other credentials — its Licensure page lists prorated licensure fee schedules for operators, speech-language pathologists and audiologists, and dietitians, and none for nurse aides. KDADS does publish a universal ‘Credit Card Authorization’ form on its Applications & Forms page, which implies a payable charge, but no dollar figure appears there either. NO DOLLAR AMOUNT IS STATED IN THIS RECORD. Separately, TRAINING TUITION is not set by the state: courses are run by adult care homes, hospitals, hospices, PACE programmes and other approved sponsors, and no Kansas source read publishes a price or a cap. Kansas also publishes no statement about who bears the cost of training — the pro rata reimbursement rules that some states publish were searched for on 2026-08-16 in K.S.A. 39-936, 39-970 and 39-979 and on every readable KDADS Health Occupations Credentialing page, and none appears.
Exam
AN EXAMINATION IS REQUIRED, AND THE COURSE IS NOT. That combination is the distinctive Kansas fact. The examination is ‘prescribed by the secretary for aging and disability services’ and must be ’the same examination’ for every candidate (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(4)), but the statute forbids KDADS from tying it to a particular course: ‘The licensing agency shall not require unlicensed employees… to enroll in any particular approved course of instruction as a condition to the taking of an examination’ (39-936(c)(3)). What KDADS may do instead is approve or disapprove courses and publish guidelines for them. Anyone who completes an approved course ‘shall be eligible to take an examination’ (39-936(c)(4)), and KDADS supports the alternative route with a ‘Documentation of Training for Challenging Test’ form. PRACTICAL MACHINERY KDADS PUBLISHES: a list of test sites for nurse aide and home health aide exams, a rescheduling request form, and an accommodation request form for the state exam. WHAT THIS RECORD DOES NOT STATE, BECAUSE KANSAS DID NOT PUBLISH IT WHERE IT COULD BE READ: the number of questions, the time allowed, the passing score, the number of attempts permitted, and whether the skills portion is separately scored. Those are set by the secretary’s rules and by the candidate materials; the KDADS document titled ‘Certified Nurse Aide Regulations’ and the agency’s certification FAQ page could not be opened as of August 16, 2026, and Kansas’s administrative regulations site would not deliver rule text. No figure is guessed here. There is one structural signal worth recording from the statute’s neighbouring track: for the non-CNA competency route, ‘such unlicensed employees shall demonstrate competency in a list of skills that are identified and prescribed by the secretary for aging and disability services’, evaluated by a qualified registered nurse (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(2)(B)) — so Kansas’s competency standard is a state-prescribed skills list rather than a vendor’s.
Renewal & continuing education
KANSAS PUBLISHES NO RENEWAL TERM AND NO RENEWAL FEE FOR A CERTIFIED NURSE AIDE, and the absence is not an oversight of this record — it is what the state’s own pages show. KDADS’s Licensure page carries an ‘Online License Renewal’ section with the opening dates for every credential it renews: ‘Dietitian: January 15; Operators: March 15; Adult Care Home Administrators: May 15; Speech-Language Pathologists: September 15; Audiologists: September 15.’ Nurse aides are not on that list. K.S.A. 39-936 contains no expiry, no term of years and no renewal provision for the certification. WHAT KANSAS USES INSTEAD IS A REFRESHER TRIGGER TIED TO NOT WORKING: an adult care home must require a certified nurse aide to complete an approved refresher course where the aide ‘since passing the examination required under paragraph (2), has had a continuous period of 24 consecutive months when the certified nurse aide has not provided direct, individual care to residents’ (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(8)(A)), and ‘The secretary for aging and disability services shall prepare guidelines for the preparation and administration of refresher courses and shall approve or disapprove courses’ (39-936(c)(8)(B)). The other recurring obligation is the employer’s, on every hire: a facility may not use a certified nurse aide ‘unless the facility has inquired of the state registry as to information contained in the registry concerning the individual’ (39-936(c)(7)). KDADS also publishes a ‘Name or Address Change Certification’ form for keeping the registry entry current. Anyone who needs a definitive statement of whether a Kansas certification lapses on a date should ask Health Occupations Credentialing directly — the agency routes ‘Nurse Aide Registry General Questions’ to a named staff member at 785-296-6877. NO CONTINUING EDUCATION REQUIREMENT FOR A CERTIFIED NURSE AIDE IS PUBLISHED IN ANY KANSAS SOURCE READ ON 2026-08-16. The tiers searched were K.S.A. 39-936 in full, K.S.A. 39-970, K.S.A. 39-979, and every readable KDADS Health Occupations Credentialing page including the Licensure page and the All Training Courses / Continuing Education page. That last page is the strongest evidence: it sets out continuing-education material credential by credential — ‘ACHA CE Methods’, ‘Dietitian CE Methods’, ‘Operator CE Methods’, ‘SLP AUD CE Methods’, each with a prorated CEU schedule — and it lists nothing of the kind for nurse aides. What the same page does list under the nurse aide heading is the refresher and the medication-aide update: ‘CNA - 90-Hour; CNA Refresher; CMA Update; CMA - 75-Hour’. So the recurring education obligation Kansas actually publishes for this credential is the REFRESHER COURSE triggered by 24 consecutive months without providing direct, individual care (K.S.A. 39-936(c)(8)), not an annual or biennial hour count. The certified MEDICATION aide, by contrast, has a Continuing Education Renewal Application Form and a Continuing Education Instructor Roster among KDADS’s published documents — a useful contrast, and a reason not to import the medication aide’s rules onto the nurse aide.
How to apply
Applications are handled by Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) — Health Occupations Credentialing (HOC), inside the agency’s Survey, Certification and Credentialing Commission. HOC certifies nurse aides, approves the training courses and the instructors, prescribes and gives the state examination, and maintains the Kansas Nurse Aide Registry. Its office is at 503 S Kansas Ave., Topeka, KS 66603-3404. The Kansas State Board of Nursing licenses nurses and has no role in nurse aide certification.. Start at the official application page .
Verify a license in Kansas
Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, on the GL Suite licensing platform. KDADS links it from its Health Occupations Credentialing page as ‘Kansas Nurse Aide Registry’, alongside a separate general ‘License Verification’ link. publishes a public license search . It covers Kansas Nurse Aide Registry entries. KDADS states what the tool is for in the strongest terms an agency uses about a lookup: ‘Kansas Nurse Aide Registry - This website is considered primary source verification. The registry information on the website is real-time with the registry database’ — meaning an employer checking here is checking the database itself, not a nightly copy. That matters because Kansas puts a legal duty on the employer to check: no adult care home may use a certified nurse aide ‘unless the facility has inquired of the state registry as to information contained in the registry concerning the individual.’ A READER SHOULD KNOW TWO THINGS BEFORE CLICKING. First, the lookup would not open to any automated request as of August 16, 2026 — it answered with a security-check page instead of a search form, from two different network locations — so nothing here describes the form’s fields, and this record states no field list rather than guessing. Second, KDADS offers human alternatives for the same question and publishes them on its own page: certification and registry questions go to Health Occupations Credentialing at 785-296-6877, and the agency separately publishes a public list of Findings of Abuse, Neglect or Exploitation. KDADS also sells bulk data through a published ‘Obtain Professional Mailing Lists’ route.
Records come from Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, on the GL Suite licensing platform. KDADS links it from its Health Occupations Credentialing page as ‘Kansas Nurse Aide Registry’, alongside a separate general ‘License Verification’ link.’s own system. LicensingAtlas does not hold license records and cannot confirm any individual’s status — the date on this page refers to the requirements described above, not to anyone’s credential.