Today I took and passed the ANCC FNP exam and wanted to share my experience while it is still fresh:
First, although the process of submitting the online application was quite simple, it took 7 weeks to receive confirmation that I could schedule the exam. The reason - the Validation of Education form. My SON sent it electronically in mid-December, and by early February the ANCC told me they still hadn't received it. As it turns out, the SON uses a secure server that (I presume) the ANCC can't log in to. So my Validation Form was just sitting out in cyberspace for all that time waiting for someone to open it. I finally had the SON send it to me, logged on to the secure server myself, downloaded the form, and sent it to the ANCC. Less than an hour later I received authorization to schedule! Very frustrating and disappointing to have waited so long for that.
Needless to say, I had lots of time to study, using the following sources:
School notes & texts. I studied one system at a time and made powerpoint flash cards of things like "signs" (e.g. Markle's sign), reflexes, etc.
Fitzgerald CDs & book
Leik review book - there are over 600 practice questions in the back, highly recommend (despite a few errors scattered throughout)
FamilyNP prep - purchased 15 practice tests. These practice tests did help a little regarding clinical topics. However, there are a LOT of non-clinical questions such as theory, famous psychologists, NP entrepreneurship, etc. which were simply not reflective of the types of non-clinical questions that were actually on the exam. This led me down the path of studying nursing theories (Leininger, family stress, family dynamic, transcultural, blah blah blah) plus psych stuff like Erikson, Freud, Piaget....none of this stuff was relevant. Additionally, there were supposed to be all unique questions, but I had LOTS of repeats. Overall, the time (& money) I spent on these practice tests would have been better spent studying other sources.
Test day:
I don't know about anyone else, but I have taken two certification tests at my local testing center and both times there was one person in the room clickety-clacking away typing up War and Peace or something. It is beyond irritating and distracting! The testing centers should really separate the "typers" from the "clickers".
I had about 10 or so photos. The photo questions were application, such as "which of the following would you biopsy" and such.
There were 7-10 multiple answer questions, such as "pick 3" of the following. Some of them were a little challenging in that I knew 2 of the choices easily, but struggled with the third. Unfortunately, you either get the whole question right or the whole question wrong. There were also matching questions and a few "place in the correct order" questions.
There were lots of questions on research. Fitzgerald has a link on her website that is very helpful for this:
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and there is an additional handout for those who purchased the review course. These two Fitzgerald sources alone probably earned me 5 questions on the exam.
Lots of professional/legal questions. I recommend Carolyn Bippert's book and reading the recommended resources on the ANCC website regarding leadership.
There were also lots of cultural questions. I don't know how to study for those. Some of them I knew just from life experience, some I straight up guessed.
After the test, I received a print-out stating that I had passed. No raw score was given, which is probably for the best. After passing the exam, it is still required to go to the ANCC website and request a validation form to be sent to the BON (for ~$300, one would think the ANCC could manage that step automatically).
Last thing:
The exam itself was WAY less clinically-oriented than I expected. They say it's 25% non-clinical, but I bet it's more like 50/50. Of those, the clinical questions were the most straightforward with no rare or unusual conditions or disease states I'd never heard of. Fitzgerald says "common conditions occur commonly" and that is absolutely reflected on the exam. There was very little by way of meds either, with the exception of the very common meds for the very common chronic conditions. On the other hand, in my opinion, many of the non-clinical questions seemed ambiguous and from out of left field.
