CNA Requirements in Oklahoma — Training, Exam & Registry

Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) — Nurse Aide Registry, within Protective Health Services. The Department’s statutory job is stated in its own enabling law: ‘The State Department of Health shall have the power and duty to: 1. Issue certificates of training and competency for nurse aides; 2. Approve training and competency programs…; 3. Determine curricula and standards…; 4. Establish and maintain a registry for certified nurse aides and for nurse aide trainees’ (63 O.S. § 1-1951(A)). The WRITTEN examination is delivered by a different state agency — the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education’s CareerTech Testing Center, through its Health Certification Project. No board of nursing is involved. administers certified nursing assistant licensing in Oklahoma. 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

Oklahoma’s statutory noun is ‘certified nurse aide’ and the abbreviation CNA is protected by law — 63 O.S. § 1-1951(C) reserves both ’the title Certified Nurse Aide’ and ’the abbreviation CNA’ to a person holding a valid current certificate, on pain of a civil monetary penalty. But the name on the FORM you will fill in is different: Oklahoma’s rules and applications call the nursing-home credential a LONG TERM CARE AIDE (LTCA), and the state’s written examination for it is coded ‘Long Term Care - 7C’. Anyone searching Oklahoma material for ‘CNA’ and finding nothing should search ’long term care aide’ instead. Four sibling categories share the same registry and are constantly mistaken for it: HOME HEALTH AIDE (HHA), ICF/IID CARE AIDE (formerly, and still often, ‘Developmentally Disabled Care’), RESIDENTIAL CARE AIDE (RCA) and ADULT DAY CARE AIDE (ADCA). Two more credentials sit on the same list: the CERTIFIED MEDICATION AIDE (CMA), which is a certified nurse aide who has passed a medication administration program, and the FEEDING ASSISTANT. DEEMING is Oklahoma’s own word for moving between those categories, and it has a published table. NATP and NATCEP are the Department’s names for an approved training program. NONTECHNICAL SERVICES WORKER is a separate registry Oklahoma runs alongside the nurse aide registry — the Department’s own heading reads ‘Nurse Aide and Nontechnical Services Worker Registry’ — and it is not a nurse aide credential. ‘CNA license’ is folk usage: Oklahoma issues a certificate and a certification card, not a licence, and no board of nursing is involved.

License types & fees

Who does NOT need this license — exemptions

Oklahoma does not publish an occupational exemption list of the kind a trade licence carries. The certification requirement operates through the EMPLOYER — ‘An employer shall not use an individual as a nurse aide unless the employer has consulted the Oklahoma Nurse Aide Registry’ — so the boundary is drawn by who employs you and in what setting. Three real carve-outs exist. FIRST, the statutory definition itself excludes licensed staff: a ‘Nurse aide’ means a person who provides nursing care or health-related services in the listed settings ‘and who is not a licensed health professional’ (63 O.S. § 1-1950.1(A)(1)), and the rules define a licensed health professional broadly — physician, dentist, podiatrist, chiropractor, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, pharmacist, physical, speech or occupational therapist, registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, licensed social worker or licensed registered dietician. SECOND, the TEMPORARY EMERGENCY WAIVER lets a facility, for a limited period, use uncertified aides: a nursing facility, specialized facility, continuum of care facility, assisted living center, adult day care center or residential care home may apply where it ‘Makes diligent efforts to recruit and retain certified nurse aides’ and has no disqualifying deficiency, describing ’the means by which uncertified nurse aides shall be trained and evaluated during the waiver, and the anticipated duration of the waiver, not to exceed six months.’ The Department must decide within thirty days, must notify the Long Term Care Ombudsman, and the facility must notify residents and families and post the notice conspicuously; the fee is $100, or $75 for a subsequent waiver (OAC 310:677-1-6). THIRD, TRAINEES: an entity must tell a trainee in writing ’that successful completion of the nurse aide training and competency examination program shall result in the individual being listed in the Department’s nurse aide registry’ (310:677-3-4(i)), and the registry itself covers ’nurse aide trainees’ as a category the statute names alongside certified aides. AN EXPIRED CARVE-OUT WORTH KNOWING ABOUT because it still circulates: 310:677-1-7, the COVID-19 ‘Presumptive approval of nurse aide training programs and emergency training exception’, is marked [EXPIRED] — the Administrative Code’s editor’s note records that ‘This emergency action expired without being superseded by a permanent action… on 9-15-21… Section 310:677-1-7 was no longer effective.’ WHAT OKLAHOMA DOES NOT SAY: no source read states that a nursing student, a hospital aide, a home care worker outside a licensed home care agency or a personal care attendant is exempt from, or subject to, this registry. Note that Oklahoma answers part of that question by creating a separate certification for the setting rather than by exempting it — home health, ICF/IID, residential care and adult day care each have their own aide category on the same registry.

Fees

THE LONG TERM CARE AIDE — THE CREDENTIAL MOST PEOPLE MEAN BY CNA — IS FREE ON THE STATE SIDE, and Oklahoma says so three separate ways. ON A NEW APPLICATION: 310:677-1-3(f) sets the fees for the routes onto the registry that do not run through an approved Oklahoma training program — deeming, home health aide reciprocity, training exceptions and the program waiver — and then names who pays: ‘The fees specified in (1) through (4) of this subsection apply to applications for home health aides, certified medication aides, ICF/IID care aides, residential care aides, and adult day care aides. A fee shall not be charged on an application requesting certification as a long term care aide only’ (OAC 310:677-1-3(f)(5)). ON A CARD: ‘A fee shall not be charged on an application requesting a duplicate or amended long term care aide certification card’ (310:677-1-3(h)). ON RENEWAL: the $10 renewal fee is imposed on ‘a home health aide, ICF/IID care aide, residential care aide, or adult day care aide’ (310:677-5-2(c)) — a list that leaves the long term care aide out — and the Department’s own renewal form carries the checkbox ‘LTC – No Fee.’ THE OTHER CATEGORIES DO PAY. Renewal: $10 each for home health aide, ICF/IID care aide, residential care aide, adult day care aide, feeding assistant and certified medication aide (OAC 310:677-5-2(c); ODH Form 717). Deeming applications: $15 each, except ‘Home Health Aide deemed to Long Term Care Aide with no fee required.’ Home Health Aide Reciprocity Application: $15. Training Exception or Foreign Graduate Training Exception Application: $15. Nurse Aide Training and Competency Evaluation Program Waiver Application: $15. Certified Nurse Aide Retest Application: $15 when submitted ‘by a home health aide, ICF/IID care aide, residential care aide, or adult day care aide.’ Duplicate or amended certification card: $10. All of them are non-refundable, and the Department repeats that on its own form: ‘All Fees submitted are NON-Refundable.’ THE STATUTORY CEILING: ‘Each person certified as a nurse aide pursuant to the provisions of this section shall be required to pay certification and recertification fees in amounts to be determined by the State Board of Health, not to exceed Fifteen Dollars ($15.00)’ (63 O.S. § 1-1951(B)(1)) — which is why no fee on this page is larger. EXAMINATION FEES ARE NOT PUBLISHED BY THE STATE and are not paid to the state: ‘Candidate must pay testing fees to the test site upon registration. For information about testing fees or to schedule an exam, please contact a HCP test site’ (CareerTech Testing Center). Neither the Department nor the testing centre publishes an amount, so none is stated here. A SEPARATE FEE THAT FALLS ON FACILITIES, NOT AIDES: a nursing facility applying for a temporary emergency waiver pays ‘a non-refundable fee of one hundred dollars ($100)’ initially and ‘$75’ for a subsequent waiver (310:677-1-6(c)(7)-(8)). NOT SET BY THE STATE: training tuition; the Department publishes the approved-program list but no prices, and notes that ‘Any program marked (locked) requires enrollment in another program on the campus and cannot be taken by itself.’

Exam

Two parts, both required, with separate pass standards. ‘An individual shall pass both the written or oral examination and the skills examination to complete the competency examination successfully. An individual shall score at least seventy (70) percent on the written or oral examination. An individual shall demonstrate at least eighty (80) percent accuracy for the skills examination’ (OAC 310:677-3-11). WRITTEN OR ORAL — THE CHOICE IS YOURS BUT THE LANGUAGE IS NOT: the written portion is given ‘in English’, and it must ‘Allow a nurse aide to choose between a written and an oral examination’; if oral, ’the examination portion shall be read from a prepared text in a neutral manner.’ The questions must ‘Be developed from a pool of test questions, only a portion of which is used in any one (1) examination’, and the process must prevent disclosure of both the question pool and individual results (310:677-3-10(a)). SKILLS: it must ‘Consist of randomly selected items drawn from a pool of tasks generally performed by nurse aides’ and ‘Be performed in an entity in which the individual will function as a nurse aide or a similar laboratory setting.’ WHAT YOU BRING TO THE WRITTEN TEST, per the state testing centre: an ‘Original Training Verification Form signed by the training program supervisor or approval letter from NAR’; a ‘Valid, current photo identification issued by government entity within the U.S.’; and proof of your Social Security number (card, Social Security Administration letter, W-2 or official tax return) — ‘If unable to provide proof of SSN, a SSN Attestation Form must be completed.’ You may test somewhere other than where you trained: ‘The trainee may sit for the written or oral examination and skills examination at a different location than where training was completed if the testing entity is provided with a Training Verification Form.’ ATTEMPTS: a failing candidate must be told ‘The areas which the individual did not pass’ and ‘That the individual may retake the examination a total of two times without further training’ (310:677-3-12). RESULTS AND THE REGISTRY: the testing entity must be capable of ‘providing competency results in the proper format for compatibility with the Department’s nurse aide registry within thirty (30) days of scoring’, and ‘The Department shall include in the nurse aide registry a record of successful completion of the competency examination within thirty (30) days of the date the individual is found to be competent.’ Oklahoma publishes a Certified Nurse Aide Study Guide and practice scenarios through its testing centre.

Renewal & continuing education

Every two years, and the renewal test is PAID WORK — sworn to, and provable on demand. ‘A home health aide, long term care aide, ICF/IID care aide, residential care aide, and adult day care aide shall renew individual certification once every two (2) years’, and each renewal application requires ‘An oath of truthfulness and completeness to be signed by the applicant, affirming that the applicant completed at least eight (8) hours of nursing or health related services for compensation during the preceding 24 months’, plus, ‘Upon request of the Department, the applicant shall produce documentation of at least eight (8) hours of nursing or health related services performed for compensation during the preceding 24 months’ (OAC 310:677-5-2(b)). WHAT COUNTS AS PROOF: the Department’s renewal form accepts an administrative signature, a paystub, or a Form W-2, together with the facility’s name, address and phone and your start and end dates. WHAT IT COSTS: nothing for a long term care aide; $10 for each of the other categories. HOW TO FILE IT: online through the Department’s Long Term Care Digital Application, or on the paper Nurse Aide Renewal Application (ODH Form 717) mailed to the Nurse Aide Registry in Oklahoma City. NO CONTINUING EDUCATION is part of this — see ce_hours. TRAINING PROGRAMS MUST WARN YOU ABOUT THIS IN ADVANCE: ‘Training programs shall inform the long term care aide, home health aide, ICF/IID care aide, residential care aide, and adult day care aide that they shall complete a new nurse aide training and competency examination or competency examination if, upon applying for renewal of certification, the nurse aide has not provided at least eight (8) hours of nursing or health related services for compensation during the previous twenty four (24) months’ (310:677-3-13). ONE OBLIGATION RUNS TO THE FACILITY RATHER THAN TO YOU, and it is easy to mistake for a renewal condition: a facility ‘shall: (1) Complete a performance review of every nurse aide at least once every twelve (12) months and provide two (2) hours of inservice training specific to their job assignment each month’ and ‘(3) Ensure that each nurse aide certification is current and not expired’ (310:677-11-1(a)). NONE for the nurse aide credential. Nothing in OAC 310:677-5-2 (renewal), 310:677-3-13 (what programs must tell you about renewal) or the Department’s Nurse Aide Renewal Application asks a nurse aide for continuing education; what renewal asks for is the sworn statement of at least eight hours of paid nursing or health-related work in the preceding 24 months, and, for the non-LTC categories, $10. Tiers searched on 2026-08-16 and found not to impose continuing education on a nurse aide: OAC 310:677 in full (all nine subchapters), 63 O.S. §§ 1-1950.1 to 1-1951, the Department’s Nurse Aide Registry page, and ODH Form 717 (revised 12/2023). TWO NEARBY REQUIREMENTS ARE REAL AND ARE NOT THE AIDE’S. First, the FACILITY must ‘provide two (2) hours of inservice training specific to their job assignment each month’ and complete an annual performance review of every nurse aide, with in-service education ‘generally supervised by a registered nurse who has at least two (2) years nursing experience, at least one (1) year of which shall be in the provision of long term care services’ (OAC 310:677-11-1(a)). That is a condition of the facility’s compliance, not of your certification. Second, the CERTIFIED MEDICATION AIDE — a different credential — does carry continuing education, and the rule states it directly: ‘A certified medication aide shall complete at least eight (8) hours of continuing education every twelve (12) months, excluding the first year of certification, from a State approved program. A record of successful completion shall be kept in the certified medication aide’s personnel file’ (OAC 310:677-13-1(b)), repeated as a renewal condition at 310:677-13-1(d)(1). The Department’s renewal form says the same thing in its own words, requiring the CMA to ‘Attach documentation of continuing education equivalent to eight (8) hours for every twelve months of certification, excluding the first year of certification’, and adds that ‘Continuing Education Units (CEUs) must be completed during the certification period or within one year after that.’

How to apply

Applications are handled by Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) — Nurse Aide Registry, within Protective Health Services. The Department’s statutory job is stated in its own enabling law: ‘The State Department of Health shall have the power and duty to: 1. Issue certificates of training and competency for nurse aides; 2. Approve training and competency programs…; 3. Determine curricula and standards…; 4. Establish and maintain a registry for certified nurse aides and for nurse aide trainees’ (63 O.S. § 1-1951(A)). The WRITTEN examination is delivered by a different state agency — the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education’s CareerTech Testing Center, through its Health Certification Project. No board of nursing is involved.. Start at the official application page .

Verify a license in Oklahoma

Oklahoma State Department of Health (the lookup runs on the Department’s own Public Health Information Network host and is linked from the Nurse Aide Registry page as ‘Verify A Nurse Aide’) publishes a public license search , searchable by last name, first name or certification number. It covers Oklahoma nurse aide registry entries across the state’s aide categories. The three search fields above were read from the live search form’s own inputs, not from a description of the tool. TWO THINGS TO EXPECT BEFORE CLICKING. First, the page is built by a script in your browser and says so if scripting is turned off — ‘You must enable Javascript to use this application.’ Second, a result is produced by submitting the form rather than by loading an address, so a search result has no web address of its own: it cannot be bookmarked, emailed or cited, and an automated watch on this address can only ever see the empty form. A SECOND, SEPARATE REGISTRY sits beside it and answers a different question: the Department also publishes a ‘Nurse Aide and Nontechnical Services Worker Abuse Registry’, which is where substantiated findings of abuse, neglect, mistreatment or misappropriation are recorded. Employers have a legal duty to consult the registry before using someone as a nurse aide — ‘An employer shall not use an individual as a nurse aide unless the employer has consulted the Oklahoma Nurse Aide Registry to determine whether the individual is listed on the nurse aide registry and whether the individual has no confirmed findings of abuse, neglect or misappropriation of patient/resident/client property.’ The statute also requires the registry to be ‘sufficiently accessible to promptly meet the needs of the public and employers.’.

Records come from Oklahoma State Department of Health (the lookup runs on the Department’s own Public Health Information Network host and is linked from the Nurse Aide Registry page as ‘Verify A Nurse Aide’)’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.