292+ Free CBRN Practice Questions

The CBRN (Certified Burn Registered Nurse) is the first specialty certification dedicated exclusively to burn nursing. It is offered by BCEN (Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing) and validates advanced knowledge and skills across the entire burn care continuum from resuscitation through rehabilitation.

To sit for the CBRN exam you must hold a current, unencumbered Registered Nurse or APRN license issued in the United States, a U.S. territory, Canada, or Australia, with no active restriction, suspension, probation, or disciplinary order. International credentials equivalent to a U.S. RN license may qualify when verified through TruMerit. BCEN recommends about two years of experience in the specialty before testing, but experience is not required and BCEN publishes no minimum practice-hour requirement.

The CBRN exam contains 175 items in total: 150 scored items and 25 unscored pretest items. Total seat time is 180 minutes (3 hours). The exam is delivered by computer at PSI testing centers or through PSI Live Remote Proctoring.

The official BCEN content outline effective July 2023 divides the 150 scored items across nine domains: Pathophysiology (15 items), Clinical Practice: Initial Management under 72 hours (25), Clinical Practice: Acute Care (25), Clinical Practice: Pain, Agitation and Delirium (15), Clinical Practice: Wound Management (22), Psychosocial Support and Patient Advocacy (10), Ambulatory and Reconstruction (10), Special Populations (18), and Professional Practice (10). The outline publishes item counts rather than percentages, so Initial Management and Acute Care are tied as the largest domains at 25 items each, or about 16.7% of the exam.

BCEN does not publish a CBRN first-time pass rate. What BCEN does publish is the passing standard: candidates must answer 115 of the 150 scored items correctly. Results are reported as pass or fail based on the raw score, the exam is not curved, and candidates who do not pass receive the number of items answered correctly within each content-outline area.

CBRN certification is valid for four years. Recertification is available by continuing education attestation — 100 contact hours within the cycle, of which at least 75 must be burn clinical content and at least 50 must come from an accredited provider — or by retaking the exam. BCEN randomly audits roughly 10% of recertification applications.

Study systematically against the official BCEN CBRN Examination Content Outline rather than a six-domain summary, because Psychosocial Support, Ambulatory and Reconstruction, and Special Populations together account for 38 of the 150 scored items. Use the ABA burn nursing literature, the outline itself, and practice questions. High-yield areas include fluid resuscitation, wound and surgical management, infection control, the hypermetabolic response, pain and delirium, and the professional practice topics. Plan for three to four months of dedicated study.