1.1 Current Exam Facts

The Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse (CHPN®) is the registered-nurse credential awarded by the Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center (HPCC). HPCC is the certifying body. The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) is the membership association that sells the discounted exam fee. The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation (HPNF) funds certification scholarships. Those three organizations share advancingexpertcare.org, but they are not interchangeable: only HPCC writes, scores, and awards CHPN.

CHPN is specifically the RN-level hospice and palliative certification. It is not the advanced-practice Advanced Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse (ACHPN®), not the pediatric RN Certified Hospice and Palliative Pediatric Nurse (CHPPN®), not the LPN/LVN Certified Hospice and Palliative Licensed Nurse (CHPLN®), and not the nursing-assistant Certified Hospice and Palliative Nursing Assistant (CHPNA®). If your license is RN and your practice is adult hospice, adult palliative care, or a blend, CHPN is the correct target. Studying an ACHPN outline will over-weight prescribing and under-weight bedside RN coordination; studying CHPPN will over-weight pediatric developmental content that CHPN does not test.

What the live exam actually contains

HPCC delivers a computer-based, four-option multiple-choice examination through PSI. The live exam contains 150 items. Of those, 135 are scored and 15 are unscored pretest items that HPCC uses to try out future questions. You cannot identify pretest items. They are interspersed, not parked in a labeled block at the end, so every stem deserves a real answer. You have three hours. There is no penalty for guessing: a blank and a wrong selection are scored the same, and only a correct selection can raise the scaled score.

Do not treat any 200-question practice bank as the official exam length. Prep-site inventory is a study-product choice. HPCC’s candidate handbook and credential page describe 150 items. Candidates who pace as if they must finish 200 questions in three hours rush; candidates who assume only 100 “real” questions linger and leave scored items unanswered.

You may test at one of approximately 500 U.S. PSI test centers or by Live Remote Proctoring (LRP) from a private room that meets PSI’s hardware rules (section 1.3). HPCC opens four windows each calendar year: March, June, September, and December. You apply for a window, then pick a date inside that month.

The CHPN program is accredited by the Accreditation Board for Specialty Nursing Certification (ABSNC). ABSNC accreditation is the nursing-specialty equivalent of saying the exam is built from a job analysis, cut-scored with a documented method, and maintained under published policies rather than assembled from workshop slides.

Current pass rates and the certificant population

Use HPCC’s published statistics to calibrate effort, not to predict your personal result. A first-time pass rate near 70% means the exam is discriminating: experienced hospice RNs still fail when they under-prepare Practice Issues or treat “palliative” as only opioid conversion.

Repeaters in 2025 passed at 48.8% (82 of 168). That drop is the practical argument for treating the first window as the real attempt, not as a “see the exam” visit. As of February 19, 2026, HPCC listed 7,283 active CHPN certificants—the largest HPCC nursing credential. Certification lasts four years. Renewal is Hospice and Palliative Accrual for Recertification (HPAR) plus the Situational Judgment Exercise (SJE) (section 1.4), not an automatic re-sit of this multiple-choice exam.

The five domains on the 2026 handbook outline

HPCC’s current Detailed Content Outline (DCO) comes from a 2021 job analysis. This study guide follows that 2026 handbook DCO. HPCC has posted a 2027 detailed content document, but that outline is not yet in force for the exam you will take under the current handbook. Do not rebuild your study plan around 2027 task language as if it already governs today’s scored items.

The 135 scored items distribute as follows. Percentages are of scored items, not of the 150-item booklet.

How those weights should change your study calendar

Pain plus Symptom Management together are 54 scored items (40%). That is the clinical core: opioid selection and rotation, adjuvant analgesics, dyspnea, nausea, delirium, constipation, secretions, and related nursing interventions. Assessment and Planning is the smallest domain by count, but it is the intake logic for the rest of the exam—functional status, comprehensive symptom review, goals of care, and IDT planning. If you miss who the decision-maker is or whether the patient is imminently dying, later “management” stems become guesswork.

Support, Education, and Advocacy covers family teaching, cultural and spiritual support, grief, and the RN’s advocacy role when goals and treatments diverge. Practice Issues is the domain bedside RNs most often under-study: Medicare hospice rules, scope, ethics, quality, documentation, and professional boundaries. It has the same 28 scored items as Symptom Management. A candidate who only drills pain math is leaving 56 scored items (Support + Practice) comparatively cold.

Medications: generic names

HPCC uses generic drug names on the exam. Study morphine, hydromorphone, oxycodone, fentanyl, methadone, haloperidol, lorazepam, ondansetron, metoclopramide, glycopyrrolate, and similar—not brand-only flashcards. If a stem happens to use a brand you recognize, translate it, but your default list should be generic. Dosing and conversion items still expect RN-level judgment (when to call the prescriber, what to monitor), not independent APRN prescribing.

Pacing against the real clock

One hundred fifty items in 180 minutes is 1.2 minutes per item. Because pretest items are invisible, you cannot skip “the experimental ones.” Because there is no guessing penalty, flag-and-return beats leaving blanks. Because four domains sit at 26–28 items, a last-week cram that only reviews Pain still leaves the majority of the scored exam unreviewed.