Best review questions for PCCN exam prep?

Specialties CCU

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I work on a cardiac critical care floor, I've been a nurse for 1.5 years, and I'm preparing to take the PCCN exam. I study best with good test questions. I loved UWorld when I was preparing to take the NCLEX, the rationales were so very well written and comprehensive and reviewed the pharmacology, priorities, lab values, etc., so that you were reminded of the important factors whether you got the question right or wrong. I was wondering if anyone has experience in finding really great practice questions for the PCCN. I bought the question bank from AACN, which is awesome to get an idea of the questions, but the rationales don't have much "meat" to them. Would really appreciate any experience you could share along these lines. Thank you so much!

Specializes in medsurg, progressive care.

AACN's Essentials of Progressive Care Nursing is a good book, but it isn't a question book. "Ace the PCCN You Can Do It" by Nicole Kupchik was extremely helpful, as was the AACN's online course review. The review was 13 hours long and came with handouts for each section. It was costly but I convinced my educator to buy it for the floor.

Good luck!

Thank you so much, PCNurse88! I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

I just took the PCCN last week and passed. I second that Nicole Kupchik's "You Can Do it! Ace the PCCN Practice Review Questions" is an amazing resource. There are 3 practice exams and she gives good rationales for the answers. "Progressive Care Nursing Certification" by Thomas Ahrens was also another great book to use and it comes with practice exams and questions after each chapter. I used MedEd's online PCCN Review with Cammy Fancher which also came with practice questions and Cammy was great with her explanations I thought. I work Cardiac PCU so the cardiac section wasn't too much trouble for me, and hopefully won't be for you either since you work in cardiology too. Definitely know your hemodynamics though!

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