I do believe that it is a good time to be a nurse. There are so many opportunities to advance your career. The nursing shortage has made us invaluable, and I feel we are more respected than ever. This is clearly evidenced by the outpouring of events during National Nurse's Week. That being said, it is a great time to become a certified nurse! Additional certifications in some institutions actually qualify for a pay differential. If not for the money, do it for your own personal satisfaction. We had 11 applicants sit for the examination in Las Vegas in April. I am happy to report that we had none CANS members pass and two CPSNs. Congratulations to all our new certified nurses.
We continue on our journey through the ABNS certification process. In April, we had three volunteers work with folks from CNET to revise the CANS examination. This was the first rewrite for this examination. The process looks at the data from the tests taken over the last 3 years and determines what are good and bad questions statistically. Questions are reworded or thrown out if they are "not working." Eventually, the goal is to have a bank of questions to use. The CPSN examination will have a rewrite session in the fall at the national convention. The rewrite session will slow us down a bit in our application process but is necessary under the ABNS requirements. We are currently looking at 2017 for the actual application submittal. Thank you to Connie Brennan, Abbey Helton, and Karen Menard for your hard work in the rewrite session.
One of our potential goals for 2016 was to develop practice examinations to assist those in studying for the examinations. Given our current workload, we are tabling this until 2017. I apologize for the delay, but we will hopefully have that for you in the future.
As a reminder for your continuing education credits for recertification, please look for plastic specific to qualify for your plastic surgery credits. We are not granting credit for disease process such as diabetes or breast cancer unless it relates to plastic surgery specifically. When in doubt, call the board office to clarify.
Respectfully,
Jacqueline Frazee, BSN, CNOR, RNFA, CPSN
President, PSNCB