Information verified by NCC during the process of determining eligibility

The National Certification Corporation (NCC) is a not-for-profit organization that provides a national certification program for nurses, physicians, and other licensed health care professionals.  Certification is awarded to nurses in the obstetric, gynecologic, and neonatal specialties and, advanced practice Neonatal and Women's Health nurse practitioners. Subspecialty certifications are awarded to licensed health care professionals in the subspecialty areas of electronic fetal monitoring, care of the extremely low birth weight neonate, neonatal neuro-intensive care, obstetric and neonatal quality and safety and neonatal pediatric transport. Examples of health care professionals who may be eligible for subspecialty examinations include MD, DO, PA, Interns, Residents, EMT, Paramedic, OT, PT, Speech, Pharm D, RN, APRN, and RT.

All Core examinations except APRN certifications have practice requirements to obtain certification. Testing requirements for CORE RN and APRN examination are beyond those required for registered nurse licensure and measure the theoretical and clinical content of a nursing specialty. All Core and Subspecialty certification exams are developed in accordance with accepted standards of validity and reliability and are open to licensed healthcare professionals as outlined in the eligibility criteria.

All NCC certifications (Core (RN or APRN) and Subspecialty) require a current license to meet the eligibility criteria to take an NCC certification.   NCC validates current licensure through candidate-submitted official documentation from the licensing agency or its designees or direct contact with the licensing agency is initiated if warranted.

For RN certification, a minimum of two years of practice experience in the specialty is required.  For APRN certification, documentation of APRN specialty-related graduate education is required.

For RN work experience, NCC does a random audit of employment.  For APRN graduate education, transcripts and diplomas must be submitted. Diplomas and transcripts are verified and matched with the official documents provided by the school’s officials. NCC does not verify education for core RN or subspecialty certifications.

Verification of a certificants active certification can be completed on the NCC’s website via the verification link on the home page. Verification requires the candidate’s NCC ID number which indicates the verifying party has obtained permission to access the certification status of the NCC specified certificant.

A document on primary source verification can be found here.

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