1.1 Written and Skills Exam Format, Fees, and Scheduling Through Credentia

1.1 Written and Skills Exam Format, Fees, and Scheduling Through Credentia

Every Nevada nurse aide candidate must clear the same two-part competency exam before a name is added to the state registry. The Nevada State Board of Nursing (NSBN) does not write or administer this exam itself. Instead, NSBN contracts with Credentia, a national testing vendor, to deliver Nevada's version of the National Nurse Aide Assessment Program (NNAAP) — the same underlying framework used by dozens of states, built around a content outline that took effect in April 2024. Understanding exactly how Credentia structures, scores, and prices this exam matters just as much as knowing the clinical material, because a large share of first-time failures come from format surprises rather than knowledge gaps.

Two Separately Scored Components

The NNAAP competency exam is really two exams in one, and Nevada tracks each one independently:

1. A Written Knowledge Test — a multiple-choice exam covering nursing assistant knowledge across the NNAAP content outline.
2. A Skills Test (also called the Skills Evaluation) — a hands-on demonstration of caregiving tasks performed in front of a live evaluator.

A candidate can pass one component and fail the other on the same test day. Nevada does not require retaking a component that was already passed — only the failed half needs to be rescheduled and repaid.

The Written Knowledge Test

The Written Knowledge Test contains 70 multiple-choice items total, but only 60 of those are scored. The remaining 10 are unscored pretest items that Credentia mixes in to field-test future questions. Because the pretest items look identical to scored items, candidates should treat every question as if it counts — there is no way to identify and skip the 10 that do not.

Key format details:

• Time limit: 120 minutes (2 hours) for all 70 items
• Passing score: 70% on the scored portion
• Delivery: computer-based by default at a Credentia-approved test site
• Accommodation: an oral or written-format version is available for candidates who request it in advance

At 120 minutes for 70 items, most candidates have roughly 1 minute 45 seconds per question — enough time to read carefully, but not enough to second-guess every answer repeatedly.

The Skills Test

The Skills Test measures whether a candidate can safely and correctly perform hands-on nursing assistant tasks — not just describe them. On test day, Credentia's system randomly selects 5 skills from a task list of roughly 22 NNAAP skills (tasks such as transferring a resident, measuring vital signs, providing perineal care, and assisting with feeding). The candidate has 30 minutes total to complete all 5 assigned skills in front of a licensed Nurse Aide Evaluator — the evaluator announces a 5-minutes-remaining warning once 25 minutes have elapsed, but the actual deadline is the full 30 minutes, not 25.

Grading is unforgiving by design: each skill is broken into a checklist of steps, and a subset of those steps are marked critical. Missing even one critical step fails that entire skill, regardless of how well the rest of the skill was performed. Because the 5 skills are drawn at random, no candidate can predict in advance which 5 they will draw — with one guaranteed exception: hand hygiene (handwashing) is always one of the 5 skills tested, for every candidate, every time. Treat proper handwashing technique as a skill that must be performed flawlessly, since it is the one skill guaranteed to appear on every Skills Test.

Written vs. Skills Test at a Glance

Fees and Scheduling

Total cost to sit for both components is $140 — $50 for the Written Knowledge Test and $90 for the Skills Test. Candidates schedule and pay directly through Credentia, selecting an available test date and location. Fees are due at the time of scheduling and are non-refundable; a candidate who needs to change their date is subject to a separate rescheduling fee rather than a refund and rebook.

What Happens If You Pass One Part but Not the Other

Because the Written Knowledge Test and Skills Test are scored and tracked separately, a passing result on one component is never erased by a failing result on the other. A candidate who passes the Written Knowledge Test but fails the Skills Test only needs to reschedule and pay for the Skills Test — the written result stands. The same is true in reverse.

Retakes

Nevada allows up to 3 attempts per component, tracked completely independently — failing the Skills Test three times has no effect on a candidate's remaining Written Knowledge Test attempts, and vice versa. If a candidate fails a component on all 3 attempts, NSBN requires completion of an additional NSBN-approved training program before that specific component can be attempted again. That is a meaningful cost and time consequence, which is exactly why understanding the format described above — not just the clinical content — matters so much on exam day.