What is covered on the ANCC Family Nurse Practitioner Board Certification Exam?

According to the ANCC Family Nurse Practitioner Test Content Outline, the exam covers the following topics:

Foundations for Advanced Practice 37%

• Advanced Physiology/Pathophysiology Across the Life-Span
• Advanced Pharmacology For Treating Patients Across the Life-Span
• Advanced Health/Physical Assessment Across the Life-Span
• Clinical Prevention and Population Health for Improvement of Outcomes
• Research methodology
• Informatics

Professional Practice 17%

• Leadership, Advocacy, and Inter-professional Collaboration
• Quality Improvement and Safety
• Healthcare Economics, Policy, and Organizational Practices
• Scope and Standards of Practice

Independent Practice 46%

• Health Promotion and Maintenance Across the Life-Span
• Illness and Disease Management
• Care of Diverse Populations
• Translational Science/Evidence-based Practice
• Advanced Diagnostic Reasoning/Critical Thinking

Tips and Tricks for the FNP Board Exam

Nurse Practitioner Certification Examination and Practice Preparation

Every year, we interview quite a few students to understand what the best prep tools available are. For FNPs, we hear pretty consistently that the Nurse Practitioner Certification Examination and Practice Preparation is a great book. (But make sure to use the CDs).

Practice Makes Perfect

As with most medical specialties, there is a statistically significant correlation between the number of questions that an FNP takes and their pass rate. We suggest taking as many practice questions as possible prior to the exam. We also recommend taking all 1900 of our FNP practice questions twice (once in timed mode, and once in review mode).

Changing Gears Mentally

Part of the difficulty of preparing for the Family Nurse Practitioner Board exams is the scope of information. You’ll need to be able to answer questions about Pediatric Development, Gerontological Issues, and then quickly switch back to OBGYN based topics. We frequently hear that changing gears mentally is one of the hardest parts of the exam.

Best Practices

Make sure to 1) Take FNP practice questions that are relevant to the categories on the exam 2) Flag questions that you struggled with to return to later and 3) not CRAM the 2 days before the exam – you should be well rested and alert. There are definitely a couple of tricky questions on the exam and you need to be prepared for those. Good luck!