I think you must retrain and retest in order to be re-listed on the registry as being eligible to work. Work as a Home Health Aide could have been used to renew your license if it wasn’t expired. I encourage you to contact the Ohio Nurse Aide Registry at 800-582-5908 or 614-752-9500 or by email at nar@odh.ohio.gov to verify this information. It might be worth asking them if you could skip training and testing if you or the facilities where you were employed can provide documentation of eligible work all the way back to 2004.
According to the registry, in order to maintain eligibility to work, an individual must provide nursing and nursing-related services for monetary compensation within twenty-four months after he or she last met the requirements for being listed on the registry. The individual must provide at least seven and one-half consecutive hours or eight hours in a forty-eight hour period of nursing and nursing-related services during the twenty-four month period. An approved training program must re-train and re-test an individual who does not meet this requirement in order for the individual to be re-listed on the registry as being eligible to work.