CNA Certification in New Jersey — Requirements & Fees

How to become a CNA in New Jersey: a 90-hour state training minimum — verified from New Jersey Department of Health.

Source-verified

Requirements below are drawn from New Jersey Department of Health — Certification Program, within the Division of Certificate of Need and Licensing (the Department's older documents call it the Division of Health Facilities Evaluation and Licensing). The Department certifies; a contractor keeps the registry: 'PSI is a State-approved independent testing company under contract to the Department to provide support in the development, administration, scoring, and reporting of results of the Nurse Aide in Long Term Care Facilities Competency Evaluation. In addition, PSI maintains the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry and the New Jersey Nurse Aide Abuse Registry.' No board of nursing is involved in the nurse aide credential — the New Jersey Board of Nursing appears only where its Unlicensed Assistive Personnel curriculum is used, in hospitals and in the homemaker-home health aide pathway. (official site) and last verified August 16, 2026. Boards change fees and rules often — confirm before acting.

Requirements at a glance

What the credential is: A CERTIFICATE issued by the New Jersey Department of Health, with a registry listing behind it that a contractor maintains. The Department states the components on its own page — 'Nurse aide certification involves training, practical skills evaluation, a written/oral exam and a criminal background check' — and names the four steps in its NATCEP guide as 'a ninety-hour state-approved nurse aide in long-term care facilities training course, a practical skills evaluation, a written/oral examination, and a fingerprint-supported criminal background investigation.' WHO RUNS WHAT: the Department's Certification Program approves training programmes, approves instructors and evaluators, monitors courses on site and issues the certificate; PSI, 'a State-approved independent testing company under contract to the Department', develops, administers, scores and reports the competency evaluation and 'maintains the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry and the New Jersey Nurse Aide Abuse Registry.' The Department's own portal system is at a separate address from its public site and is described in its own Training Guide as the place where an applicant 'can now be registered and use online portal system to approach department to process respective applications submitting required documentation to get certified.' NO BOARD OF NURSING SITS IN THIS PATHWAY. The New Jersey Board of Nursing appears twice at the edges — it owns the Core Curriculum for Unlicensed Assistive Personnel that opens two of the alternative routes to the examination, and it owns the UAP curriculum hospitals must use — but it does not certify nurse aides.
The legal frame: The nurse aide certificate is a creature of New Jersey's long-term care facility licensing rules rather than of a professional practice act. The controlling subchapter is N.J.A.C. 8:39-43, 'Certification of Nurse Aides in Long-Term Care Facilities', inside N.J.A.C. 8:39, Standards for Licensure of Long-Term Care Facilities. The Department cites its authority for that chapter as 'N.J.S.A. 26:2H-1 et seq., specifically 26:2H-5', and readopted the whole chapter with technical changes in a rulemaking that set a new expiration date of 2028. The federal frame is 42 CFR Part 483 — the Department's guide cites 42 CFR 483.151(b)(2) for withdrawing programme approval and 42 CFR 483.152 for the director-of-nursing rule and the prohibition on charging aides, and its most recent nurse aide rulemaking was justified by reference to 42 CFR 483.152(a)(5).
Criminal background investigation — fingerprint-supported, and it recurs at renewal: The background check is one of the four named components of certification and the Department describes it as 'fingerprint-supported'. It has its own rules chapter — N.J.A.C. 8:43I, 'Criminal Background Investigations: Nurse Aides, Personal Care Assistants and Assisted Living Administrators' — and its own pages in the Department's certification section ('Criminal Background Check' and 'Fingerprint Submissions'). It is not a one-off: recertification requires 'A criminal background check, with fingerprinting, prior to the certification expiration date.' A separate address duty attaches to it — an aide who moves must notify the registry AND, separately, 'must notify the Criminal Investigations Unit (CIU) of their new address at 609-292-4303.'
Tuberculosis testing before the first day of class: New Jersey applies the facility staff-health rule to nurse aide STUDENTS, and the Department says so expressly. N.J.A.C. 8:39-19.5(b) requires that 'Each new employee including members of the medical staff employed by the facility, upon employment shall receive a two-step Mantoux tuberculin skin test with five tuberculin units of purified protein derivative', with exceptions for documented negative two-step tests within the last year, documented positive results, prior treatment, or medical contraindication; a significant result (10 millimetres or more of induration) triggers a chest x-ray 'and, if necessary, followed by chemoprophylaxis or therapy.' The Department's gloss: 'The Certification program has interpreted this regulation to extend to nurse aide students involved in providing direct care to residents of a long-term care facility. The Mantoux testing MUST be performed PRIOR to the students beginning the first day of classroom instruction.'
Who pays for training — and the rule that you cannot be billed back: Three separate protections, all in the certification subchapter. First, 'no nurse aide who is employed by, or who has received an offer of employment from a long term care facility on the date on which the aide begins a nurse aide training and competency evaluation program may be charged for any portion of the program, including any fees for textbooks or other required course materials' (N.J.A.C. 8:39-43.18(d)). Second, if you paid your own way and are then hired within a year, 'the facility shall provide for the reimbursement of reasonable costs incurred in completing the program on a pro rata basis during the period in which the individual is employed as a nurse aide. Such costs include, but are not limited to, fees for textbooks or other required course materials' (8:39-43.18(e)). Third, and this is the one most states do not have: 'no nurse aide shall be required, as a condition of employment, to pay the cost of the training program in the event of voluntary or involuntary termination of employment' (8:39-43.18(g)) — a training-repayment agreement of that kind is barred. The Department's practical advice to students: 'Community colleges, county vocational schools and private vocational schools should advise students to retain the original receipts and present them to the long-term care facility upon employment.'
Where you can take the course: 'Programs are conducted in Long-Term Care Facilities, Private Vocational Schools, County Vocational Schools, High Schools, and Community Colleges', and the Department tells candidates to reach a programme through 'The long term care facility where you are interested in working', 'Your county vocational school', 'Your county community college', or the Certification Program itself. Every programme type must submit lesson plans to the Certification Program to start approval, and most must also pass a site visit; a private vocational school needs approval from the Department of Education and the Department of Labor and Workforce Development in addition to the Department of Health, and its site visit is 'conducted by all three Departments'. New programmes are approved for one course at a time, which 'MUST be conducted Monday thru Friday, during the day', before the programme may apply for multiple courses within a two-year approval period.
Instructors and evaluators — and the firewall between them: 'Instructor/Evaluators are required to attend an Instructor/Evaluator Training Workshop prior to approval. The individual must be currently affiliated with an approved NATCEP. Instructors may not evaluate the students they have instructed.' The qualifications sit in N.J.A.C. 8:39-43.10, and the EVALUATOR half of that rule was rewritten effective November 6, 2023 to loosen it: the old text required three years of full-time-equivalent experience in a licensed health care facility, one year as a registered professional nurse in a licensed long-term care facility within the preceding five years, and a Department evaluator workshop; the adopted text requires an evaluator to 'Be licensed in New Jersey as a registered professional nurse; and... Possess at least one year of full-time or full-time equivalent experience as a registered professional nurse providing care for the elderly or the chronically ill of any age.' The Department's stated reason was alignment with the federal standard at 42 CFR 483.152(a)(5), and the change followed a rulemaking petition and public comments describing 'schools across the State having more applicants than available seats for CNA training programs due to the difficulty the schools face finding certified instructors.' A LONG-TERM CARE FACILITY DIRECTOR OF NURSING may supervise training but 'generally may not perform the actual training' — the DON may be the primary instructor only if released from DON duties and formally replaced during the instruction period, and the Certification Program must be told in writing who is covering.
Medication Aide — a boundary, and the one place New Jersey refuses reciprocity outright: The Certified Medication Aide is a separate Department of Health certificate that requires a current New Jersey CNA or certified homemaker-home health aide credential underneath it, carries its own 10-hours-every-two-years continuing education under N.J.A.C. 8:36-9.2(d), and has its own trainer requirements. Two Department statements are worth carrying across because they are the questions people actually ask: 'a Certified Medication Aide IS NOT the same as a Certified Medical Assistant', and 'New Jersey does NOT reciprocate with ANY OTHER state's medication aide program' — which is a sharper rule than the nurse aide reciprocity described elsewhere in this record.

Legal basis

New Jersey Department of Health — Certification Program, within the Division of Certificate of Need and Licensing (the Department’s older documents call it the Division of Health Facilities Evaluation and Licensing). The Department certifies; a contractor keeps the registry: ‘PSI is a State-approved independent testing company under contract to the Department to provide support in the development, administration, scoring, and reporting of results of the Nurse Aide in Long Term Care Facilities Competency Evaluation. In addition, PSI maintains the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry and the New Jersey Nurse Aide Abuse Registry.’ No board of nursing is involved in the nurse aide credential — the New Jersey Board of Nursing appears only where its Unlicensed Assistive Personnel curriculum is used, in hospitals and in the homemaker-home health aide pathway. administers certified nursing assistant licensing in New Jersey. 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

New Jersey’s own term is CERTIFIED NURSE AIDE, and the Department’s abbreviation is CNA — its email address for the programme is [email protected] and its online system is the ‘Certified Nursing Aides Portal’, so unlike several registry-only states the public’s word and the state’s word coincide here. What New Jersey issues is a CERTIFICATE, and being on the registry is a consequence of holding it rather than the credential itself — the Department speaks of ‘your certificate’ and of ‘your listing on the Registry’ as two things in one sentence. FIVE NEIGHBOURING NEW JERSEY TERMS ARE NOT SYNONYMS. PERSONAL CARE ASSISTANT (PCA) is a companion certificate the same Department programme administers and renews under the same rules — ‘Renew your nurse aide or personal care assistant certificate’ — but it is a different credential. CERTIFIED MEDICATION AIDE (CMA) is a further certificate that requires a CNA or CHHA underneath it, and the Department warns that it ‘IS NOT the same as a Certified Medical Assistant’. CERTIFIED HOMEMAKER-HOME HEALTH AIDE (CHHA) is a New Jersey Board of Nursing credential, not a Department of Health one, and it is one of the routes to the nurse aide examination. UNLICENSED ASSISTIVE PERSONNEL (UAP) is the Board of Nursing’s category for hospital aides who are not certified nurse aides, trained on the Board’s own Core Curriculum. And NATCEP — Nurse Aide in Long Term Care Facilities Training and Competency Evaluation Program — is the school, not the person; it is the acronym the Department uses constantly, including as the required subject line on emails to the programme.

License types & fees

Type	Notes	Who Its For
Certified Nurse Aide (CNA) — a Department of Health certificate, with registry listing attached	New Jersey runs a real certification, not a bare registry listing, and the Department states the four parts in one line: 'Nurse aide certification involves training, practical skills evaluation, a written/oral exam and a criminal background check.' Its own guide puts it the same way: 'In New Jersey, the certification process consists of the successful completion of: a ninety-hour state-approved nurse aide in long-term care facilities training course, a practical skills evaluation, a written/oral examination, and a fingerprint-supported criminal background investigation.' The registry sits behind the certificate and is run by the Department's testing contractor rather than by the Department itself. THE SCOPE IS DRAWN BY SETTING, NOT BY TASK — see exemptions for the hospital carve-out, which is unusual and catches a lot of people.	Anyone who will work as a nurse aide in a New Jersey licensed long-term care facility, and in the licensed long-term care or sub-acute unit of a hospital.
Personal Care Assistant (PCA) certificate — the companion credential the Department administers alongside the CNA	The Department's certification section is headed 'Nurse Aides/Personal Care Assistants' and its recertification page covers both in one sentence: 'Renew your nurse aide or personal care assistant certificate (recertification).' The renewal conditions the Department publishes are written for both credentials at once. This record documents the NURSE AIDE certificate; nothing here describes what a personal care assistant may do or how the PCA certificate is first obtained, because the Department's nurse aide pages do not say and no separate PCA page was read as of August 16, 2026.	Not covered by this record beyond the boundary.
Certification through vocational training and other means — five routes to the examination without the 90-hour course	'You may take the Department's examination without completing a nurse aide training course and clinical skills evaluation if you qualify as one of the following: You are a student, graduate nurse, or foreign licensed nurse who submits evidence of successful completion of a course in the fundamentals of nursing; You can submit evidence of successfully completing a course in the fundamentals of nursing within the 12 months immediately preceding your application to take the competency examination... You have training and experience as a nurse aide in a military service; You are certified as homemaker-home health aide by the New Jersey Board of Nursing, and successfully completed the Long-Term Care Module of the Core Curriculum for Unlicensed Assistive Personnel; (Clinical skills evaluation is still required); You have successfully completed the Core Curriculum for Unlicensed Assistive Personnel provided by the New Jersey Board of Nursing, and the Long-Term Care Module... (Clinical skills evaluation is still required).' Note the parenthetical: the last two routes waive the COURSE but not the clinical skills evaluation.	Nursing students, graduate nurses, foreign-licensed nurses, military-trained aides, and New Jersey certified homemaker-home health aides.
Certification through equivalency or reciprocity — two named routes	Both routes sit on top of a common precondition — current valid out-of-state certification, plus no criminal convictions and 'no findings of abuse, neglect, or misappropriation of resident property on that state's registry.' Route 1 is a continuing-education route and Route 2 is an employment route that still requires New Jersey's examinations. Full terms are in the reciprocity field.	Someone holding a current, valid nurse aide certificate in another state or U.S. territory.
Certified Medication Aide (CMA) — a SEPARATE New Jersey certificate that requires the CNA first	New Jersey's medication aide credential is built on the CNA or on the certified homemaker-home health aide credential: 'To recertify, you must be currently certified in New Jersey as a CNA, or a CHHA.' It runs on different rules — N.J.A.C. 8:36-9.2(d) requires that 'At least once every two years, on a schedule to be determined by the Department, a medication aide shall file an application for renewal of current certification. In order to be eligible to renew a current certification, the medication aide shall have completed at least 10 hours of continuing education, seminars, or in-service training every two-year certification period', split five hours on medication-administration fundamentals and five on 'current drug use relevant to the elderly'. Two Department warnings worth repeating: 'a Certified Medication Aide IS NOT the same as a Certified Medical Assistant', and 'New Jersey does NOT reciprocate with ANY OTHER state's medication aide program.' The CMA is not covered further here.	Not covered by this record.

Who does NOT need this license — exemptions

NEW JERSEY’S BIGGEST CARVE-OUT IS THE HOSPITAL, and the Department states it in two sentences that need to be read together: ‘New Jersey does not require nurse aides to be certified to work in an acute care hospital. However, if a hospital has a licensed long term care unit or a licensed sub-acute unit, certified nurse aides must staff those units.’ So the boundary runs through the building — the same hospital can have floors where certification is optional and floors where it is mandatory. WHAT REPLACES CERTIFICATION IN THE ACUTE-CARE PART OF A HOSPITAL is a different curriculum owned by a different agency: ‘Hospitals must use the approved New Jersey State Board of Nursing Unlicensed Assistive Personnel (UAP) curriculum to develop and implement a training program for unlicensed assistive personnel. Please refer to the Hospital Licensing Standards, N.J.A.C. 8:43G-18.3(e), (f).’ The Department directs questions about that curriculum to the Board of Nursing rather than answering them itself. THE COURSE, BUT NOT THE SKILLS TEST, IS WAIVED for five categories of applicant — nursing students, graduate nurses and foreign-licensed nurses with a fundamentals of nursing course; anyone completing a fundamentals of nursing course within the preceding 12 months; people with nurse aide training and experience in military service; New Jersey certified homemaker-home health aides who have completed the Long-Term Care Module of the Board of Nursing’s Core Curriculum for Unlicensed Assistive Personnel; and anyone who has completed that Core Curriculum plus its Long-Term Care Module. For the last two the Department adds, in parentheses, ‘(Clinical skills evaluation is still required).’ PROGRAMMES, NOT ONLY PEOPLE, CAN BE SHUT OUT: the Department ‘must withdraw approval for a period of two years of training courses conducted by a long-term care facility’ where the facility has substandard-quality-of-care deficiencies in the federal resident rights, resident behavior and facility practices, quality of life or quality of care groupings, or ‘has been assessed a civil monetary penalty (CMP) of not less than $5000’, and such a facility ‘may not serve as a clinical instruction site for a NATCEP conducted by an educational institution’ — though it ‘may reapply after one (1) year for reconsideration’ on stated criteria. NOTHING IN THE DEPARTMENT’S NURSE AIDE PAGES OR ITS NATCEP GUIDE exempts a home health aide, a personal care attendant in a private home, or a family caregiver from this certificate, and none of those pages says the certificate is required of them either; that silence is recorded as silence.

Fees

NEW JERSEY PUBLISHES ITS PROGRAMME FEES CLEARLY AND ITS CANDIDATE FEES NOT AT ALL. On the Department’s payment page, under ‘Certified Nurse Aide and Certified Medication Aide Programs’, the published charges are: ‘Certified Nurse Aide Program Approval Fee ($75)’; ‘Curriculum Fee ($75)’; ‘Instructor and Evaluator Fee ($75)’; ‘CNA Instructor and Evaluator List ($75)’; and ‘Certified Medication Aide Program Approval Fee ($100)’. Those are paid by schools, facilities and instructors, not by aides. A DIVERGENCE WORTH KNOWING, RECORDED BOTH WAYS: the Department’s NATCEP guide — whose regulatory references it dates to October 31, 2006 — states a $75 course-approval check but prices two of the other items lower, at ‘$50.00 (per Copy)’ for additional copies of the Curriculum and ‘a check for $50 made payable to the New Jersey Department of Health for each instructor or evaluator’ registering for a workshop. The live payment page says $75 for both. This record reports both figures with their sources and does not pick one. WHAT THE INDIVIDUAL CANDIDATE PAYS is not published by the Department: no application fee, certification fee, recertification fee, examination fee or re-test fee appears on the Department’s nurse aide pages, on its ‘Submit Payments’ page or in its NATCEP guide, all of which were searched on 2026-08-16. The examination fee is set out in the candidate bulletin published by the Department’s testing contractor, and that bulletin could not be read as of August 16, 2026. WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT BE PAYING AT ALL: if you were employed by, or held an offer from, a long-term care facility when your training began, the facility owes the whole cost including textbooks; if you are hired within twelve months of completing, it owes a prorated reimbursement; and no aide ‘shall be required, as a condition of employment, to pay the cost of the training program in the event of voluntary or involuntary termination of employment.’

Exam

Two parts: a practical (clinical) skills evaluation and a written or oral competency examination. The Department names both as separate components of certification — ’training, practical skills evaluation, a written/oral exam and a criminal background check’ — and its reciprocity Route 2 requires an out-of-state aide to ‘pass the New Jersey clinical skills competency examination and the written/oral competency examination’, which confirms the oral form is an alternative to the written one rather than an addition. THE EXAMINATION IS DEVELOPED, ADMINISTERED, SCORED AND REPORTED BY PSI under contract to the Department, and the Department’s guide treats examination security as PSI’s: the approval stamp and school code issued to every approved programme ‘are issued for the security of the examination.’ THE CANDIDATE’S OWN GUIDE IS THE NURSE AIDE EXAMINATION CANDIDATE INFORMATION BULLETIN, which the Department links from its application page and also offers to send directly — a candidate may contact ‘The Certification Program, to receive New Jersey’s Nurse Aide Examination Candidate Information Bulletin or a list of approved programs.’ Programmes receive candidate handbooks from PSI at no charge, and the Department asks them to ’encourage nurse aide candidates to retain the candidate Information Bulletin for future reference.’ THE BULLETIN COULD NOT BE READ AS OF AUGUST 16, 2026: the address the Department links now lands on the testing company’s general test-taker home page rather than on the bulletin. Everything that bulletin alone would settle is therefore ABSENT from this record rather than guessed — no question count, no time limit, no number of skills, no passing score, no limit on attempts and no examination fee is stated here, and none of those appears anywhere on the Department’s own nurse aide pages, in its NATCEP guide or in its published payment schedule.

Renewal & continuing education

Every two years, and the Department states four conditions rather than one. ‘Renewal and update of your listing on the Registry is required every two years. To be recertified, you must have: A current, valid nurse aide or personal care assistant certificate; At least seven hours of paid employment performing nursing or nursing-related services, in a licensed health care facility or agency, within the 24 months preceding your certificate expiration date; No revocation or suspension of a certificate; A criminal background check, with fingerprinting, prior to the certification expiration date.’ TWO THINGS MAKE NEW JERSEY’S RENEWAL DISTINCTIVE. First, the work test is SEVEN HOURS over two years — among the lowest published anywhere in this cluster, and the qualifying setting is broad: ‘a licensed health care facility or agency’, not only a nursing home. Second, the background check RECURS: most states run fingerprints once, at entry; New Jersey requires a fresh fingerprint-supported check before every expiration date. ADDRESS CHANGES ARE A TWO-CALL JOB and the Department is emphatic about it: ‘Nurse aides and/or personal care assistants who have moved since the last renewal must notify the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry immediately at 877-774-4243. In addition, nurse aides and personal care assistants must notify the Criminal Investigations Unit (CIU) of their new address at 609-292-4303.’ NO CONTINUING EDUCATION is among the four conditions — see ce_hours. NO RENEWAL FEE is published by the Department, and no renewal notice or reminder is described on any Department page read on 2026-08-16. NONE is published as a condition of New Jersey nurse aide recertification. The Department’s recertification page lists exactly four requirements — a current valid certificate, at least seven hours of paid nursing or nursing-related employment in the previous 24 months, no revocation or suspension, and a fingerprint-supported criminal background check before the expiration date — and continuing education is not among them. Tiers searched on 2026-08-16 and finding none: the Department’s Nurse Aides/Personal Care Assistants page, its Apply for a Certification page, its Renew or Replace a Certificate page, its Submit Payments page and its NATCEP guide. CONTINUING EDUCATION DOES APPEAR IN NEW JERSEY’S NURSE AIDE SCHEME, but on the way IN rather than on the way round: an out-of-state aide using reciprocity Route 1 must show that ‘Within the prior 24 months, you must have completed 24 hours of approved CEUs. These CEUs must include 12 hours of approved continuing education in care for residents with Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia-related disorders, and a total of 12 hours of approved continuing education in the following areas: infection control procedures; emergency procedures; abuse and neglect, and misappropriation of resident property; resident rights; and pharmacy.’ That is a condition of transferring in, not of staying certified in New Jersey — a distinction it is easy to collapse, and this record does not collapse it. A SEPARATE CONTINUING-EDUCATION DUTY DOES ATTACH TO THE MEDICATION AIDE CERTIFICATE that sits on top of the CNA: 10 hours every two years under N.J.A.C. 8:36-9.2(d), obtained through the employer, with ‘Section 2 of your renewal form… filled out by your employer to attest to your 10 hours of continuing education.’

How to apply

Applications are handled by New Jersey Department of Health — Certification Program, within the Division of Certificate of Need and Licensing (the Department’s older documents call it the Division of Health Facilities Evaluation and Licensing). The Department certifies; a contractor keeps the registry: ‘PSI is a State-approved independent testing company under contract to the Department to provide support in the development, administration, scoring, and reporting of results of the Nurse Aide in Long Term Care Facilities Competency Evaluation. In addition, PSI maintains the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry and the New Jersey Nurse Aide Abuse Registry.’ No board of nursing is involved in the nurse aide credential — the New Jersey Board of Nursing appears only where its Unlicensed Assistive Personnel curriculum is used, in hospitals and in the homemaker-home health aide pathway.. Start at the official application page .

Verify a license in New Jersey

PSI, under contract to the New Jersey Department of Health (the Department’s guide states that PSI ‘maintains the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry and the New Jersey Nurse Aide Abuse Registry’) publishes a public license search , searchable by last name, first name, birth date or certification number. It covers New Jersey nurse aide registry entries. The page presents itself as an ‘Online Public Registry’ with a ‘Search Licensee Database’ form, and carries the Department of Health’s own mailing address and toll-free number (P.O. Box 358, Trenton, NJ 08625-0358, 1-866-561-5914) beneath the search. The four search fields above were read from the live form’s own input names, not from a description of the tool. TWO THINGS TO EXPECT. First, the birth-date field is fixed to a date picker rather than free typing, so a search generally needs a date of birth as well as a name unless you have the certification number. Second, the search is submitted rather than linked, so a result has no web address of its own — it cannot be bookmarked, emailed or cited, and anything watching this address automatically will only ever see the empty form. A SEPARATE, NEWER DEPARTMENT SYSTEM handles applications rather than verification: the Department runs a Certified Nursing Aides Portal on its own licensing site, where ‘Applicant can now be registered and use online portal system to approach department to process respective applications submitting required documentation to get certified.’ For a lost certificate, or to change a reporting name, address or employer, the Department directs people to the registry contractor by phone at 877-774-4243 rather than to either website.

Records come from PSI, under contract to the New Jersey Department of Health (the Department’s guide states that PSI ‘maintains the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry and the New Jersey Nurse Aide Abuse Registry’)’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.

Frequently asked questions

Is a New Jersey CNA a licence, a certification or a registry listing?

A certification issued by the New Jersey Department of Health, with a registry listing attached to it. The Department describes the credential as having four parts — ’training, practical skills evaluation, a written/oral exam and a criminal background check’ — and treats your certificate and ‘your listing on the Registry’ as two connected things rather than one. No board of nursing is involved: the Department’s Certification Program approves the schools, approves the instructors, monitors the courses and issues the certificate, while its contracted testing company runs the examination and maintains both the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry and the New Jersey Nurse Aide Abuse Registry.

How many training hours does New Jersey require for a CNA?

90 hours — 50 in the classroom and 40 clinical. The Department states the split on its own application page, and the clinical portion has to be done in a New Jersey licensed long-term care facility, which is why every approved school outside a facility has to file a contract with a host clinical site. The curriculum itself is the state’s and it is closed: ‘The New Jersey Curriculum for Nurse Aide Personnel in Long Term Care Facilities… has been developed by the Department for use in the NATCEP. The training programs must use the Department approved Curriculum… CONTENT MAY NEITHER BE ADDED TO NOR DELETED FROM THE CURRICULUM.’ Its four modules cover the core curriculum, psycho-social needs, physical needs, and spiritual, recreational and activity needs.

Who gives the New Jersey CNA exam?

PSI, under contract to the Department of Health, and its job is broader than the test. In the Department’s own words, PSI ‘is a State-approved independent testing company under contract to the Department to provide support in the development, administration, scoring, and reporting of results of the Nurse Aide in Long Term Care Facilities Competency Evaluation. In addition, PSI maintains the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry and the New Jersey Nurse Aide Abuse Registry.’ It also supplies every approved school with an approval stamp, a school code, application forms and candidate handbooks at no charge, and sends monthly data reports to the school and to the Department. If something goes wrong with the vendor, the Department publishes an escalation route and asks for details down to the assessment centre and the time of day.

What is on the New Jersey CNA exam?

Two parts: a clinical skills competency examination and a written or oral competency examination — the oral form is an alternative to the written one, not an addition, which is clear from the reciprocity rules requiring an incoming aide to pass ’the New Jersey clinical skills competency examination and the written/oral competency examination.’ Beyond that, the details live in the Nurse Aide Examination Candidate Information Bulletin published by the Department’s testing contractor, and that bulletin could not be read as of August 16, 2026. This page therefore does not state a question count, a time limit, a number of skills, a passing score or a limit on attempts — none of which the Department publishes on its own pages either. You can ask the Certification Program to send you the bulletin directly.

What does it cost to become a CNA in New Jersey?

The Department publishes fees for schools and instructors, not for candidates. Its payment page lists a $75 Certified Nurse Aide Program Approval Fee, a $75 Curriculum Fee, a $75 Instructor and Evaluator Fee and a $75 CNA Instructor and Evaluator List fee — all paid by programmes and instructors. No application fee, certification fee, recertification fee or examination fee for an individual appears anywhere on the Department’s nurse aide pages, its payment page or its NATCEP guide; the examination fee is in the contractor’s candidate bulletin, which could not be read as of August 16, 2026. What matters more for most people is who pays for the course: if you were employed by, or held a job offer from, a long-term care facility when training began, the facility owes the entire cost including textbooks; if you are hired within twelve months of completing, it owes a prorated reimbursement; and no aide may be required to repay training costs as a condition of employment if the job ends.

How do you renew a New Jersey nurse aide certificate?

Every two years, on four conditions: a current valid certificate; ‘At least seven hours of paid employment performing nursing or nursing-related services, in a licensed health care facility or agency, within the 24 months preceding your certificate expiration date’; no revocation or suspension; and ‘A criminal background check, with fingerprinting, prior to the certification expiration date.’ Two things stand out. Seven hours over two years is among the lightest work tests published anywhere, and the qualifying setting is any licensed health care facility or agency rather than only a nursing home. And the fingerprint check recurs at every renewal, which is unusual — most states run it once. There is no continuing-education requirement for a New Jersey nurse aide.

Do New Jersey CNAs need continuing education?

Not to stay certified. The Department’s recertification page lists four requirements and continuing education is not among them. Continuing education does appear in New Jersey’s scheme, but on the way in rather than round: an aide transferring from another state under Reciprocity Route 1 must show 24 hours of approved CEUs in the previous 24 months, half of them — 12 hours — ‘in care for residents with Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia-related disorders’, and the other 12 across infection control, emergency procedures, abuse and neglect and misappropriation, resident rights and pharmacy. A separate 10-hours-every-two-years requirement attaches to the Certified Medication Aide certificate that sits on top of the CNA, not to the CNA itself.

I am a CNA in another state — how do I transfer to New Jersey?

Two routes, both on top of three preconditions: documentation from your state’s registry that your certificate is current and valid, no criminal convictions, and no findings of abuse, neglect or misappropriation on that registry. Route 1 is the continuing-education route — 24 approved CEU hours in the previous 24 months, 12 of them in dementia care. Route 2 is the employment route — ‘24 months of full-time employment in the other state or territory, including at least 35 hours per week, as a CNA performing nursing-related service, supervised by a licensed nurse in a nursing home’, with the most recent work inside that 24-month window. Read Route 2 carefully: it waives the 90-hour course but not the tests — ‘Route 2 applicants must also pass the New Jersey clinical skills competency examination and the written/oral competency examination.’ You start either route by phone: ‘Call 1-877-774-4243 to apply for reciprocity.’

Do you need to be a certified nurse aide to work in a New Jersey hospital?

Usually not — and this is New Jersey’s most consequential carve-out. ‘New Jersey does not require nurse aides to be certified to work in an acute care hospital. However, if a hospital has a licensed long term care unit or a licensed sub-acute unit, certified nurse aides must staff those units.’ So the requirement runs through the building rather than around the job title. In the acute-care part of the hospital a different rulebook applies: hospitals ‘must use the approved New Jersey State Board of Nursing Unlicensed Assistive Personnel (UAP) curriculum to develop and implement a training program for unlicensed assistive personnel’, under the Hospital Licensing Standards at N.J.A.C. 8:43G-18.3(e) and (f).

How do I check whether someone is on the New Jersey Nurse Aide Registry?

Use the Online Public Registry the Department’s contractor runs, searching by last and first name with a date of birth, or by certification number. The birth-date field uses a date picker rather than free typing, so in practice you need either a date of birth or a certification number. A result has no address of its own, so it cannot be bookmarked or forwarded — you have to run the search each time. For a lost certificate, or to change a reporting name, address or employer, the Department sends you to the registry contractor by phone at 877-774-4243, and separately reminds aides who move to notify the Criminal Investigations Unit at 609-292-4303 as well.

See every license and certification LicensingAtlas covers in New Jersey.

Sources & verification

Last verified against these sources: August 16, 2026.

We re-fetch every cited source on a weekly schedule: see what changed at the agencies, or every correction we have ever made.

LicensingAtlas states licensing and certification requirements categorically from official sources. It is a reference, not legal or career advice, and requirements change frequently — confirm details with the issuing board before you act.