State Boards of Nursing

Verification of certification

State Boards of Nursing may look up and download certification status with a State Board access code.

Online verification request

Program Directors

To align with the 2022 Standards for Quality Nurse Practitioner Education (6th Edition), the 2023 NANN/NANNP Educational Standards (6^th Edition), and the 2020 NPWH Educational Standards addendum, NCC has updated the clinical hour requirements for the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP)and Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioners (WHNP) certifications. These changes reflect the current regulatory climate and national educational benchmarks. Effective January 1, 2030: All applicants graduating after December 31, 2029, must document a minimum of 750 direct patient care clinical hours in their APRN graduate program to be eligible to take NCC's nurse practitioner certification examinations. Simulation hours cannot be used or included to meet this 750-hour requirement. For WHNP programs, 50 of these hours can be used for telehealth. A description of the telehealth experience and expected outcomes is required if those hours are included in the direct patient care total. These changes only apply to the NP certifications; non-NP exams are unaffected.

Starting January 1, 2029, all NPs must test within 5 years of their graduation date.

After December 31, 2033, all applicants for the APRN certification examinations will be required to have 750 hours of direct patient care clinical hours to sit for NCC certification, no matter the date of graduation, and must be within 5 years of graduation.

Please read the new policy and make sure your past graduates and current students are aware of these changes. The Policy details and a reference table of dates can be found here: 750 DIRECT PATIENT CARE CLINICAL HOURS and 5 YEAR LIMITATION FOR TESTING

If you have additional questions, please contact NCC at https://www.nccwebsite.org/contact

For graduates to be eligible for the NCC certification process, NCC must review and approve the NP program from which they have graduated, and program accreditation must be current.

Program Directors are thereafter responsible for annual updates to their program profile. All substantive changes in a program must be reported and updated in the profile. Program Directors are required to ensure their program accreditation date and letter are up to date at all times. If the program accreditation lapses, students cannot sit for the examination.  In addition, to reinstate a lapsed program, you must provide all required documents and pay a 500 dollar fee.

Program reports may be generated after logging into the program profile. For programs in which one or no graduates took the examination in a given year, no report is issued to guard the confidentiality of the individual.  Programs may request the unique ID number from the student to obtain verification of certification.

Access your program profile

If you have a new NNP or WHNP graduate program, please use the following link to have the program approved.

Create a new program profile

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