5.1 Maryland Study Calendar

Build The Final Week Around Maryland's Two-Part Exam

The final week is not the time to collect more random nursing-assistant facts. It is the time to make your study plan look exactly like the Maryland exam and the Maryland certification workflow. Credentia is the primary vendor that administers the NNAAP (National Nurse Aide Assessment Program) in Maryland for the Maryland Board of Nursing (MBON), which controls certification and registry status.

(In October 2024 MBON approved Headmaster/D&SDT as an additional vendor to relieve scheduling shortages, but most candidates still test through Credentia.) Your week therefore has three jobs: confirm you are administratively ready to test, prove you can handle the 70-question knowledge exam under time pressure, and make your skills performance stable enough that nerves do not change your sequence.

Start with the path and the paperwork, because an ID or account problem can waste a strong study week. For a standard first-time Maryland candidate the path is: complete a Board-approved nursing-assistant training route, apply and schedule through the Credentia/CNA365 platform, pass the written or oral knowledge exam and the skills evaluation, then confirm MBON registry status posts for the setting where you will work. Log in yourself and verify your eligibility route, both scheduled exam parts, the test-center or online option, and any requested oral exam or accommodation.

Make sure the name on your Credentia account exactly matches your current, official photo identification. If your training program or employer helped you register, still verify the appointment personally, because you are the person who must check in and test under that name.

The April 2026 CNA-I / CNA-II Redesignation

Maryland candidates must understand the 2026 naming change because employer paperwork still mixes old and new terms. Effective April 1, 2026, MBON redesignated the two credentials:

GNA certificate holders had their certificates relabeled to "Certified Nursing Assistant-I" with the same certificate number; there is no separate GNA designation anymore. For exam week, do not let the label distract you: the testable content (the NNAAP) did not change. If an employer asks for "GNA status," that now means CNA-I status. Confirm the exact current wording in MBON online verification and your employer's compliance office.

Seven-Day Maryland Review Calendar

The knowledge review should be timed, but it should not be a nightly panic test. Run one complete 70-question block early in the week, then fix patterns. If you miss items on resident-rights language, drill rights and legal scope. If you miss items by choosing treatment actions, rehearse the nursing-assistant boundary: observe, measure, report, document, and follow the care plan; the nurse assesses and changes the plan. If you requested the oral exam, practice answering only after the whole item is read, because the oral option changes delivery, not the content standard.

For skills, use the current Maryland skills list and Credentia skill steps, not memory from another state. Maryland tests hand hygiene, measurement skills, mobility, ADL care, PPE, positioning, range of motion, mouth/foot/perineal care, and bed-to-wheelchair transfer. The safest week is not twenty partial run-throughs of your favorite skill; it is a deliberate rotation through weak skills with one full timed mock.

How To Read Your 70-Question Error Log

The written exam is built from the NNAAP content categories, and your error log should map misses to those categories so the last few days target the right material. A practical weighting to expect: physical care skills (the largest share, including ADLs, hygiene, nutrition, elimination, and restorative care), then role of the nurse aide, then communication, then psychosocial care needs, then promotion of safety, and a smaller share on infection control and data collection/reporting. After your timed block, tally misses like this:

• Scope/role misses — you chose to assess, diagnose, or change a care plan. Re-anchor on observe, measure, report, document, follow the plan.
• Safety misses — wrong transfer mechanics, missing call light, fall or burn risk. Drill safe positioning and the gait-belt sequence.
• Rights/psychosocial misses — you overrode resident choice, privacy, or confidentiality. Review the resident bill of rights language.
• Infection-control misses — wrong glove or hand-hygiene timing, clean-to-dirty order. Re-run the donning/doffing sequence.

If the same category fails twice, that is your day-3 and day-2 study block. One honest 70-question block plus a targeted fix beats four anxious full re-tests.

What To Stop Doing

Stop hunting for copied live exam questions: besides being improper, it trains you to recognize wording instead of making safe decisions. Stop memorizing rumor-based retake counts that are not in your current handbook — the real number is four attempts in 24 months, covered in section 5.3. Stop saying "I know the skill" if you have not performed it with supplies, timing, privacy, infection control, recording, and a final call-signal check. A Maryland final week should leave you with fewer surprises, not more trivia.