PCCN Study Guide 2026-2027

You have a PCCN date. Hold it. Between now and then: 435 questions with every answer explained, two 150-item practice exams, an 8-day plan, an optional 25-question diagnostic at the back. No login, no expiry.



We built this the way a charge nurse runs a unit orientation, not the way a shelf gets filled. AACN launched the current PCCN on 6 February 2024. That is the exam in these pages: 150 items in two and a half hours, 125 of them scored. Clinical judgment is 80 percent of the scored items. Cardiovascular is 33 percent of the exam on its own, and professional caring and ethical practice is 20. Your eight evenings are split the same way. Check us against AACN's published test plan. We would rather you did.



What's inside



435 original questions, every answer explained. The three you did not pick, too. You leave an item knowing why the correct action fits this patient now, and why the tempting one belongs to a different patient.



Two practice exams at 150 items, each weighted to the test plan: 50 cardiovascular items, 30 on professional caring. Pace and stamina are familiar long before test day.



An optional 25-question diagnostic at the back — take it first for a baseline or last as a final check. It samples all eight domain groups and names your two weakest.



Cardiovascular takes the first evening. The Synergy Model takes a whole one, since professional caring and ethical practice is a fifth of the scored items.



31 figures drawn for this book: rhythm to action, left against right heart failure, the STEMI clock, the two kinds of respiratory failure.



Reference cards worth keeping: the shock states, ABG interpretation, potassium and the ECG, the sepsis bundle, safe-practice essentials.

Maybe the last certification book you bought read like a critical-care textbook with the easy parts taken out. Give this one three evenings. If the diagnostic does not name two domains you would not have guessed, put it down. You lost an evening, nothing more.



Three nurses reach for it. A step-down or telemetry nurse sitting the PCCN for the first time. An acute-care nurse renewing it. An ICU nurse adding the credential who wants a plan rather than a stack of notes. If telemetry is already your day job, start at Day 2.



Day 8 is professional caring and ethical practice, and it feels least like nursing of any evening here. You'll see how the exam scores it. Downloaded once, yours to keep.



— The Passmark Publishing Team



An independent study guide from Passmark Publishing. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses or the AACN Certification Corporation. PCCN and AACN are trademarks of the AACN Certification Corporation. For exam preparation only; not medical or nursing advice.