FNP certification: How to prepare and be successful.

[kande19]

8/2015

Took the ANCC certification exam this week and PASSED! Here is what I used to study and how I felt about it.

1. Nurse Practitioner Certification Examination and Prepration 4th edition: This book covers a lot of material and goes rather deep. If you plan on using this start very early, it will take a lot of time to work through this book. However, I was not impressed with this book, and I did not feel like helped me.

2. Adult-Gerontology and Family Nurse Practitioner Certification Review Questions and Strategies 4th edion: This book has a good layout and can be covered in a quicker time frame. It does go too deep on some topics. This book was ok, but I do not recommend this book.

3. Do a live review, or buy a recording of a live review that you can watch at home on your own time. I went with Amelie Hollier (APEA). She was great, and I learned a lot from her. I went through her tapes twice. Took good notes on her printable handouts the first time so that I could refer back to them.

4. Family Nurse Practitioner Certification Intense Review: Fast Facts and Practice Questions: This is an excellent book full of good information that can be covered in a quick time frame. It has a very user friendly layout. It is also very affordable. I think every FNP student needs this book; I learned a lot from this book.

5. Exam Edge: This site offers online practice questions at a good price. They have questions for AANP and ANCC testing candidates. I feel like this is what made the difference in me passing the ANCC test. The questions are shorter than what is on the real test, but the content is excellent and will prepare students for the real test. It also has a similar layout to the real test which will help you be more comfortable during the real test. I bought 25 of these test 6 days before my real exam and only completed 11. I just ran out of time because I took a lot of time reviewing and taking notes on the questions I missed. As an added note, the website says they will reset the test 3 times but all purchased test must be completed before being reset. I highly recommend this to all FNP students. Start early enough and you can do all 50 test (100 questions each). If not 10 would be good. I just wish I had bought them earlier and could have done more. I wasted some study time on the first two books I mentioned.

In summary, get a review in some format. Purchase the Leik book and exam edge test. Buy AANP or ANCC's practice test and do them. Go to Amazon, find ANCC's "yelow book" volume 1 kindle edition and read chapters 1-3 for free. ANCC also has a few free questions on their site.

P.S. Took AANP certification exam 1 week before taking the ANCC exam and failed it. During that one week I had to prepare for the ANCC (after 2 months of studying already), I only did exam edge questions, ANCC's practice test, and read ANCC's "yellow book" chapters 1-3. Maybe I was just better prepared, but I felt like the questions on ANCC's exam was more clearly written. The non-clinical part is hard to study for, but this comes with time practicing as a nurse and incorporates some basic nursing courses (psychology, medical law& ethics, and such). Leik also does a good job covering the non-clinical part. I feel like ANCC provides a holistic picture of the FNP with the variety of topics covered on the exam. Do not let the pictures, prioritizing, and multiple answer questions scare you. On the multiple answer questions they tell you how many to select, so that helps.

Good Luck!