Specialty Certification in Nursing Essay

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As Bonsall (2012) points out, The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) has defined specialty certification as “a process by which a nongovernmental agency validates, based upon predetermined standards, an individual nurse’s qualifications for practice in a defined functional or clinical area of nursing.”  Essentially specialty certification indicates a nurse has competence and advanced knowledge within a specialized field. The Institute of Medicine (2010) has called for nurses to further their education in order to increase their competence levels and obtaining specialty certification is one of the ways in which nurses can do that.

Different types of certifications include Certified Pediatric Nurse (CPN), Oncology Certified Nurse (OCN), Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP-BC), Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA). Certification is typically good for a number of years, usually 5, and then the nurse must update, which requires additional education (American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, 2019).

Achieving certification requires taking an exam. So for The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), which are the governing boards that administer tests to nurses seeking certification, the exams are different. The ANCC exam consists of about 175-200 questions and takes around 4 hours to complete; the AANP exam consists of 150 questions and takes around 3 hours to complete (BoardVitals, 2018).

In Palliative Care the certification process is overseen the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) and the American Osteopathic Association (AOA). To obtain certification, 45 of palliative care training must be documented: the Palliative Care Courses can satisfy the requirement. One must also obtain 2000 hours in palliative care in under 3 years time (Spiritual Care Association, 2019). In New Jersey, continuing education requirements differ depending on the degree of the nurse: RNs must have 30 contact hours every 2 years; LPNs and APNs are the same, the only difference being in the specific courses required, such as Organ and Tissue Recovery for RNs, or pharmacology for APNs who can prescribe (NetCE, 2019).


The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects to have employment growth between 2012 and 2022 for palliative care (Green, 2015). The demand for palliative care is increasing and has risen by more than 7-fold over…

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…located in Toms River, NJ. The salary for this position is about the same--$75,000 per year.

· An after-hours on-call RN with palliative care certification job opening is available at Amedisys hospice, where the nurse will be required to respond to telephone requests for assistance and perform home visits for hospice and palliative care patients and families in their home setting after-hours and on weekends. The same salary is expected at around $75,000.

In conclusion, palliative care is a thriving industry and there are numerous jobs available for RNs who are certified in palliative care. Annual salaries for this position most typically start off around a respectable $75,000. These three postings described above are just a small sample of the many different opportunities available for one who has obtained specialized certification in palliative care. As the BLS shows, the industry is growing and there is a culture shift in families in America to rely upon professional care providers to provide end of life care for loved ones. As the population ages, palliative care services are expected to be….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/specialty-certification-nursing-2174546