Acceptable CEUs for ACNPs...

Advanced Practice Columnist / Guide · Aug 20, 2008

I know this might be a little early to think about this, since I just became an ACNP a few weeks ago, but I am a little confused about where to get CEU credits for ACNPs? I looked at the ANCC website for certification renewal and didn't see anything listed specifically for ACNPs except that we need to get CEUs "within our own specialty." Does this mean I can use CEUs from the New England Journal of Medicine? What about from Advance for NPs journal? I'm' just worried some CEUs might be geared more towards primary care NPs, and so then I couldn't use these ones, right? Do I just use my own judgment which CEU articles seem to be acute care ones? I did see a list of approved organizations that puts out CEU credits, but do I only use acute care type articles from this list, or any ones I want? I'm a bit confused. Thanks in advance! :)

The ANCC does not specifically tell us exactly what areas are considered part of ACNP practice aside from the fact that the certification exam blueprint from ANCC enumerates the areas in clinical practice that we, ACNP's get tested for. I think that since you are going to practice in hospital medicine, you are without question within the realm of ACNP scope of practice. As someone who is about to renew ACNP certification early next year, I know for a fact that we need 75 contact hours of CEU's to fulfill one category of requirement for renewal. There are 5 categories listed and 2 categories need to be fulfilled for renewal in addition to 1000 hours of clinical practice. You must have visited the ANCC website and familiarized yourself with the 5 categories I was referring to.

A rule of thumb I follow regarding my choice of CEU's is to only attend those that are recognized by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and has a benefit to my current clinical practice. I try to pick the conferences that provide me new learning opportunities and update my current knowledge on how best to care for my patient population at work. For instance, conferences sponsored by the Society of Critical Care Medicine, or endorsed by the American Thoracic Society are ones I typically attend. In your case, I would suggest anything that pertains to hospital practice as an internist.

NEJM and Advance does have CE credits offered from the articles they publish but if you have a yearly monetary and time-off allowance for annual CEU's (if you don't, you should ask for one), you should take the opportunity to attend a conference because not only is it a huge educational priviledge to get a lump sum of CEU's, it's also more fun than learning from an article. Many well-known academic medical centers such as Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, Mass General, and Johns Hopkins have a month by month schedule of conferences in their website and many are in Internal Medicine (look in the CME section). I always check their websites to see if there's an interesting conference I should attend. Lastly, your hospital (especially if it's an academic center) will have resident didactics, M and M rounds, or grand rounds that you likely are allowed to attend and can get CME's for.