1.1 KDADS Exam Format and State Test Facts

What the Kansas State Test Actually Is

In Kansas, the credential is officially the Certified Nurse Aide (CNA), and the gateway to it is the Kansas Nurse Aide state test. This exam is not run by a generic national vendor on its own terms — it is administered under the authority of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS), specifically the Health Occupations Credentialing unit within the Survey, Certification and Credentialing Commission. KDADS approves the training programs, sets the test rules, and maintains the official record of every certified aide.

The state test has two separate components, and you must pass both to be certified:

• The written (knowledge) test — 100 multiple-choice questions, with a 2-hour time limit.
• The skills evaluation — a hands-on demonstration of nurse aide tasks scored by an evaluator.

Failing either part means you are not certified, even if you aced the other. The two parts test different things: the written test checks whether you know the rules of safe care, while the skills evaluation checks whether you can perform care correctly and safely on a real or simulated resident.

Written vs. Oral Knowledge Test

Kansas offers the knowledge portion in two formats so that reading ability does not unfairly block a competent caregiver:

The oral version is designed for candidates who can speak and understand English but read it at a limited level. It still includes a short set of word-recognition items because aides must read labels, care-plan notes, and resident-name bands on the job. Choosing the oral test is a candidate right, not a penalty — KDADS treats both formats as equivalent paths to the same credential.

Language and time accommodations

If English is your second language, you may bring an approved bilingual dictionary into the test, and you may request roughly 2 additional hours of testing time for limited English proficiency. These accommodations matter because Kansas serves a diverse care-worker population, and the goal is to certify people who can deliver safe care — not to screen out competent aides on language grounds alone.

The 75% Pass Mark and the Skills Evaluation

Both the knowledge test and the skills evaluation are scored against a 75% minimum. On the written test, that means you can miss up to 25 of 100 questions. The skills evaluation works differently: an evaluator randomly assigns you a set of nurse aide skills to perform (for example, handwashing, transferring a resident, measuring blood pressure, or providing perineal care). Certain steps are marked as critical — missing a critical element such as failing to wash your hands or failing to identify the resident can cause you to fail the entire skill regardless of your overall percentage.

Handwashing is almost always one of the assigned skills, because infection control is the single most-emphasized competency in long-term care. Candidates frequently lose points not because they lack knowledge but because they rush, skip a step, or forget to provide for the resident's privacy and comfort.

How Kansas compares to the federal floor

Federal law under OBRA ’87 (the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) requires at least 75 hours of training nationwide. Kansas chose to exceed that floor with a 90-hour program, so a Kansas CNA has more required preparation than the federal minimum. This is why an out-of-state aide trained to a bare 75-hour standard still typically must pass the Kansas test to be added to the Kansas registry.

What the Written Test Actually Covers

The 100 written questions are not random trivia — they map to the competencies a nurse aide uses every shift. While the exact blueprint can shift, the content reliably clusters into a handful of high-yield domains, and knowing the proportions helps you budget study time:

• Basic nursing skills and physical care — bathing, grooming, feeding, toileting, mobility, and measuring vital signs. This is the largest share of items.
• Infection control and safety — hand hygiene, standard precautions, fall and fire prevention, and proper body mechanics.
• Psychosocial care and resident rights — dignity, privacy, autonomy, communication, and the rights guaranteed under federal law.
• Role of the nurse aide — scope of practice, observing and reporting, working under the supervision of the licensed nurse, and ethical/legal duties.
• Care of special populations — residents with dementia, the dying resident, and rehabilitation/restorative care.

Most questions are scenario-based: rather than asking you to define a term, they describe a resident situation and ask what the aide should do first or next. The correct answer is the action that is safest, most respectful, and within the aide's scope. Memorizing definitions is far less useful than practicing how to read a short scenario and pick the best caregiver response.

Why two hours is usually enough

With 100 questions in 120 minutes, you have a little over a minute per item — comfortable for most candidates. The trap is not time pressure but overthinking: nurse aide items are best-answer questions, and second-guessing a clearly safe answer in favor of a clever one is a common way to lose points. Read the scenario, identify the safety or rights issue at its core, and choose the option that protects the resident.