CEN

Editorial Team / Moderator · Feb 22, 2018

A couple of good threads here:

https://allnurses.com/emergency-nursing/cen-study-tips-1122371.html

https://allnurses.com/emergency-nursing/cen-2016-1023524.html

guest8888 · Feb 23, 2018

I am also studying for my CEN, any advise?

emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Feb 24, 2018

In my opinion, the cen is really a "what's the doctor gonna do?" test. I recommend mark boswell's prep material. When i studied for it years ago, i used his book (original home made version) but his stuff is now on youtube. Also spend the $ on the bcen's own practice test. It'll give you the look & feel if the actual test.

Good luck, don't change your answers.

Armygirl7 · Feb 25, 2018

I used the BCEN prep/practice book; I gave myself about 8 or 9 weeks to study. I committed to doing questions (goal of 10-20) every day, some days after getting home from the ER it was like 1 or 2 questions LOL!! But I did consistently do questions almost every day.

When you score the practice tests in the BCEN book it groups them by system - so then I would review the subjects I did the worst in in my Sheehy's Emergency Manual, and my Sheehy's Emergency Nursing: Principles and Practices.

Depending on what type of ER you work in and what region of the US you will obviously do well on the questions related to the stuff you see every day. I don't do peds so I always did poorly on the peds questions - even on the actual test I think my 2 worst areas were peds neuro and peds trauma. I also had to study up about snake bites etc - don't see many of those in NYC!

It was easier than the NCLEX! Not a lot of "check all that apply" questions, if any. And you get your results right away when you exit so that's awesome.

Good luck - study hard! I just recertified by IBT which is like a month long open book test (you can open and close the test for max 30 days). There's 150 questions on the re-cert exam and you need to get 116 correct - it seemed way harder than the original test, but I guess that's because it is open book. Sheehy's by my side and I got through! There are 175 on the CEN and 25 are not scored - you need to get 106 correct.

TheSquire, DNP, APRN, NP · Feb 25, 2018

I took Jeff Solheim's review course when he came through, and passed on my first attempt. Not sure if he's still teaching them, though - his new job as ENA Prez probably keeps him busy. I prefer structured class review, though - YMMV.