2.1 Basic Nursing Skills Overview

2.1 Basic Nursing Skills Overview

The State Tested Nurse Aide (STNA) exam in Ohio is administered by D&S Diversified Technologies (D&SDT-Headmaster) under the Ohio Department of Health (ODH). It has two parts. The written test has 79 multiple-choice questions with a 90-minute limit; you must answer at least 70% correctly. The skills evaluation asks you to perform 3 or 4 tasks in about 35 minutes, performing every key step plus at least 80% of non-key steps on each. Basic Nursing Skills ties with Personal Care as the largest content area on the written test (9 of the 79 questions each) and supplies many of the skills you will physically demonstrate.

What this domain covers

Think of Basic Nursing Skills as the everyday bedside work of a nurse aide: taking and recording vital signs, measuring height, weight, and intake and output (I&O), positioning and turning residents, transferring residents safely with good body mechanics, observing and reporting skin and wound changes, and routine care of catheters and drainage systems.

Normal adult vital-sign ranges (memorize)

These numbers anchor a large share of vital-sign questions. The exam loves to give a reading just outside the range and ask whether you report it, recheck it, or document it as normal.

How questions are framed

The STNA written test rarely asks you to recite a definition. Instead it gives a short bedside situation and asks what you do next. The strongest answer almost always (1) keeps the resident safe, (2) stays inside the aide's legal scope, and (3) reports abnormal findings to the licensed nurse. An aide observes, measures, reports, and documents; an aide does not diagnose, prescribe, or perform sterile procedures.

A reliable decision habit

For every Basic Nursing Skills item, run the same loop: read the resident's condition, recall the normal value or correct technique, decide whether the finding is normal or abnormal, then choose the action. If a reading is abnormal, the aide records it and tells the nurse promptly. If a technique is described, the safe and infection-controlled step wins over the faster shortcut. This loop converts memorized facts into the correct test-day choice.

Subjective versus objective data

The written test repeatedly separates objective data, which the aide can see, hear, or measure, from subjective data, which only the resident can report. A temperature of 99.8 F, a pulse of 88, a reddened heel, or 300 mL of dark urine are objective. Statements such as I feel dizzy, my hip hurts, or I feel nauseous are subjective. The aide records both accurately and reports the resident's exact words rather than guessing what they mean. Mixing these up is a common reason candidates miss otherwise easy reporting questions.

Where Basic Nursing Skills appears in the skills test

Many of the 21 skill tasks come straight from this domain: counting and recording a radial pulse and respirations, measuring and recording urinary output, providing catheter care, positioning a resident on their side, and transferring a resident with a gait belt. Because hand washing is embedded in every mandatory first task and several tasks require measuring and recording, mastering this chapter improves your odds on both halves of the STNA exam at once. The evaluator scores exact bolded steps, so the written facts and the hands-on steps reinforce each other.

Common traps in this domain

• Choosing an action that exceeds the aide's role, such as changing a sterile dressing or adjusting a medication.
• Forgetting to report an out-of-range vital sign because the rest of the scenario seems calm.
• Picking a comfortable shortcut, such as skipping handwashing or reusing a thermometer probe cover, that breaks infection control.
• Confusing subjective data the resident reports, such as pain or nausea, with objective data the aide measures, such as a 99.8 F temperature.
• Acting on a single odd reading without rechecking; a borderline value is often rechecked, then reported if it stays abnormal.

If you internalize the normal ranges, the aide's scope, and the observe-measure-report-document loop, the majority of this domain's questions become straightforward. The remainder of this chapter drills the specific workflows, scenarios, and traps that decide the close calls.

Why this domain carries so much weight

Basic Nursing Skills has 9 of the 79 written questions, tied with Personal Care for the most (D&S handbook p. 33). It is the core of the job a State Tested Nurse Aide performs every shift. The Ohio Department of Health and the federal nurse-aide standards expect a new aide to take accurate vital signs, keep a resident clean and safe, prevent pressure injuries, support nutrition and hydration, and recognize when a finding belongs to the nurse. The exam mirrors that expectation by testing application rather than trivia. A question that gives a pulse of 48 and a list of actions is really asking whether you know the value is abnormal, that an aide does not treat it, and that the nurse must be told.

Build the habit now of pairing every measured number with the action it triggers, because that pairing is what the written test and the bedside evaluator are both grading. Reading the stem slowly enough to catch the one decisive detail, then matching it to a memorized range or technique, is the single most reliable way to raise your score in this domain.