This CPCT/A cheat sheet distills the NHA Certified Patient Care Technician/Assistant exam into a printable rundown of the facts examiners test most. It's a premium cheat sheet built by Capital Prep — the one premium prep we trust — and it's yours free. Reinforce it with the rest of your free CPCT/A toolkit: the practice test, study guide, and flashcards.
CPCT/A exam at a glance
- Questions: 120 items (100 scored + 20 unscored pretest), multiple choice
- Time: 2 hours
- Passing score: 390 on a scaled 200–500 range (roughly 78% of scored items)
- Cost: ≈ $165 through NHA (verify the current fee at nhanow.com); a separate fee applies to each retake
What’s on the CPCT/A cheat sheet
- Patient Care (45%) — normal adult vital signs, ADLs and mobility, body mechanics and safe transfers, skin integrity and pressure-injury stages, oxygen and feeding tubes, first aid and CPR, and the Five Rights of Delegation — the largest domain.
- Compliance, Safety & Professional Responsibility (20%) — two-identifier patient ID, HIPAA and PHI, OSHA and Safety Data Sheets, RACE and PASS emergency response, mandated abuse reporting, and scope of practice.
- Phlebotomy (14%) — the CLSI order of draw and tube additives, venipuncture and capillary technique, tourniquet and site rules, and complications like hematoma and syncope.
- Infection Control (11%) — standard versus transmission-based precautions, the chain of infection, PPE donning and doffing order, and safe sharps and biohazard disposal.
- EKG (10%) — patient prep and 12-lead placement, machine settings and artifacts, cardiac conduction, and recognizing dangerous rhythms.
How to use it in your final week
- Front-load Patient Care — it's 45% of the scored items, nearly half the exam. If you master one block on the sheet, make it vital-sign ranges, ADLs, safe transfers, skin stages, and CPR.
- Drill the memory hooks that trip people up: PPE don order (gown → mask → goggles → gloves) versus doff order (gloves first), RACE and PASS for fire response, and the CLSI order of draw.
- Re-read the sheet the morning of the test for a last pass on the cut score (390 of 200–500), normal adult vitals (pulse 60–100, resp 12–20, BP < 120/80), and the C. diff soap-and-water trap.
- Pair each review pass with a short timed set — roughly 120 items in 2 hours is about a minute each — so your pacing stays sharp on phlebotomy and EKG, the smaller technical domains.
The cheat sheet is your review layer — your CPCT/A practice test drives the exam-readiness ring at the top of this page. Download it, review, then take a full practice exam (or drill with the study guide and flashcards) to see where you stand.
CPCT/A cheat sheet FAQ
Yes — the CPCT/A cheat sheet downloads as a PDF with no account and no sign-up. It sits alongside Career Employer's free Patient Care Technician toolkit: the practice test, study guide, and flashcards.
It compresses the highest-yield NHA facts into a quick reference — normal adult vital-sign ranges, safe-transfer rules, the Five Rights of Delegation, standard and transmission-based precautions, the PPE don/doff order, the CLSI order of draw, and EKG lead-placement basics — grouped by the five domains NHA weights the exam around.
It's built from NHA's current CPCT/A test plan and primary clinical sources (CDC, CLSI, AHA), and we re-check it against the NHA blueprint on a regular cycle so the domain weights and cut score stay accurate.
No — it's a review and final-week cram layer, not a full course. You need a scaled score of 390 (of 200–500) to pass, so use the sheet to lock in facts, then work full domain-weighted practice sets to confirm you're ready.
Tap the download button or the preview card at the top of this page and the PDF opens instantly. Bookmark the page so you can pull it up again the morning of your exam.
References
- 1.National Healthcareer Association (NHA). “Certified Patient Care Technician/Assistant (CPCT/A) Certification.” nhanow.com, 2026. ↑
- 2.National Healthcareer Association (NHA). “CPCT/A Test Plan.” nhanow.com. ↑
- 3.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Standard & Transmission-Based Precautions in Healthcare.” cdc.gov. ↑
- 4.Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI). “GP41 — Collection of Diagnostic Venous Blood Specimens (Order of Draw).” clsi.org. ↑
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