Certified Medication Aide Jobs

In Texas, on the ordinary route. Its medication aide program runs 140 hours (26 TAC 557.119(b)(2)), and you enter it with a high school diploma or its equivalent and a job already in hand: employed in a facility or by a home health agency on the first official day of the course, having worked either as a nurse aide in a Medicare-skilled or Medicaid nursing facility, or 90 days as non-licensed direct care staff in the 12 months before the course starts (26 TAC 557.107(b)). Recent unlicensed graduates of accredited nursing schools meet the training requirement without the program, and a permit from a state with substantially equivalent standards can win a waiver of it, and either way the employment conditions go with it (26 TAC 557.107(a), (e) and (f)).

Washington makes them the same person. A medication assistant there is a nursing assistant-certified holding a medication assistant endorsement, kept only while that certification stays in good standing (RCW 18.88A.082). The endorsement is narrow. It runs in a nursing home under a designated RN who assesses the resident before the medications go out, and while you're working under it, passing medications is your sole assignment (WAC 246-841A-589). Our CNA guide has the aide certification underneath it, and the states that issue the medication credential without one.

Sometimes, and it's the next state's answer to give. Texas can waive its training program for a permit from another state (26 TAC 557.107(f)), Washington endorses a medication assistant credential from another state where it and the training behind it are substantially equivalent to its own (WAC 246-841A-595(2)(b)), and Virginia's registration by endorsement gets an applicant as far as its state examination (18VAC90-60-92). Oklahoma has no such route for the medication permit, though the nurse aide listing underneath it does travel. A move starts with asking that board what it does with the permit you hold.