Joni Coombe, who recently completed the Certified Nursing Assistant program at the North Idaho College Workforce Training Center, takes the blood pressure of current CNA student Shaun Quinn.

Dressed in purple scrubs, Joni Coombe gingerly lifts her patient’s arm and secures a print cuff around it. She then places one end of the stethoscope on the patient’s forearm, inserts her ear pieces and inflates the cuff, all with deliberate and carefully practiced motions. She stares intently at the pressure reader and listens closely. “110 over 80,” she says triumphantly over the final air hisses of the cuff. “That’s normal.” Coombe, a 53-year-old from Post Falls, received her official pin recently in a ceremony honoring the latest class of 15 graduates who completed the Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) program offered through North Idaho College’s Workforce Training Center in Post Falls. She is one of more than 200 CNAs who graduate from the program and enter the health care field each year.

You can find out at the end of the "extended entry" section why this post is special to me.

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