APNA and ANCC Collaboration: Achieving Consensus on Future Credentialing for Advanced Practice Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing

Abstract

The American Psychiatric Nurses Association and the American Nurses Credentialing Center conducted a logical job analysis based on three recent role-delineation studies (RDSs) to determine whether there was enough commonality in the practice of psychiatric and mental health nursing by clinical nurse specialists (PMH-CS) and nurse practitioners (PMH-NP) to support the development of a single certification examination. Three hundred seventy-one work tasks gleaned from the three RDSs were presented for systematic review and discussion by the logical job analysis committee of 28 nurses certified in the specialty. Of the 371 work tasks, 332 (90%) were considered important enough to test for both the PMH-CS and PMH-NP. The results of the logical job analysis indicated that there was enough commonality in the practices of the PMH-CS and PMH-NP in psychiatric mental health nursing to warrant the development of one advanced practice examination for both roles. J Am Psychiatr Nurses Assoc, 2007; 13(3), 153-159.