Sharing my experience in passing the aanp certification

32 Posts

It was my first take and I am planning to take the ANCC as well. During my last semester, I came here to get some insights and a lady took her time to write a long post on her experience on passing her certification exam and I took her advise to heart so I would like to "keep it forward".

I went to Herzing University online and had a fabulous experience with them but since it was online, the majority of my school work was on research and discussion posts. On top of that, my nursing experience was not on bedside nursing so I knew I had to prepare well for my exam so I planned for three months of review (of which Im glad cuz I developed tendonitis- very painful and came down with the flu as well!!!).

My Preparation:

1) I went to BARKLEY Review Course mostly to get confidence and I read his review book cover to cover and made flash cards with bullet points while reading. These flash cards became my reference points.

2) Next I listened to AMALIE'S CDs EVERYWHERE and EVERYTIME and ANYTIME.

3) Then I read LEIK's tips and red flags but I did not read the whole book cuz I had an outdated one.

4) The last two weeks were spent on practice tests from both Amalie and Barkley's websites and Amalie's practice questions book AND reviewing what I missed.

My Recommendation:

1) If you don't have the knowledge base and experience (like me), I recommend reading Barkley's Review Book cover to cover.

2) LISTEN to Amalie, not just read her review. It is in the delivery of her message and the emphasis on certain points that really helped me recall stuff during my exam.

3) Get the online unlimited question and answer thingie(cant remember the name) on Amalie's website. I learned about it two weeks before my exam so I did not purchase it.

4) Do a lot of practice tests. This will teach you how to read the questions and how to answer them. I found that the questions that I answered wrong with the practice tests were mostly because I did not read the question correctly or I missed the age, symptom, etc.

5) You know you are ready when you know the diagnosis, symptoms, tests, etc that the question is asking before you finish reading the sentence, HOWEVER, you still need to look at all the choices because the goal is to choose the BEST answer.

6) Have faith.