What Is CHPPN?

What CHPPN Means and Who Awards It

CHPPN stands for Certified Hospice and Palliative Pediatric Nurse. It is a specialty nursing credential for registered nurses whose practice centers on children with serious or life-limiting illness and on the families who care for them. The credential is awarded by the Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center (HPCC), while the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) supplies membership benefits and preparation resources. If you are comparing the many ways people phrase the question, our short explainers on what CHPPN stands for and the meaning of the CHPPN acronym cover the vocabulary in more detail.

Because several unrelated credentials share similar letters, it helps to be precise: this article is only about the pediatric hospice and palliative nursing certification. Its exam, fees, and renewal rules all come from HPCC and its current candidate handbook. For a broader overview of the credential as a whole, see our page on CHPPN certification.

Who the Credential Is Built For

The certification targets RNs who already spend meaningful time caring for children and adolescents facing serious illness. That might include nurses on pediatric hospice teams, palliative care consult services in children's hospitals, community-based pediatric palliative programs, or complex care and oncology units where comfort-focused planning is a daily part of the work. The exam is not designed to teach you the specialty from scratch. It tests whether you can apply it at a competent level, which is why the practice-hour requirement matters so much.

Eligibility: Licensure and Practice Hours

To sit for the exam you need two things. First, a current, unrestricted RN license in the United States or its territories, or the Canadian equivalent. Second, documented clinical experience in pediatric hospice and palliative nursing, satisfied by either of these:

• 500 hours of pediatric hospice/palliative nursing practice in the preceding 12 months, or
• 1,000 hours of pediatric hospice/palliative nursing practice in the preceding 24 months.

Both your license and your practice hours can be audited, so keep supervisor contact information and employment records easy to retrieve. A full walkthrough of qualifying roles and documentation lives in our guide to CHPPN requirements and how to qualify.

Exam Format at a Glance

The CHPPN exam is delivered through PSI test centers or by live remote proctoring. It is closed book, and calculators are prohibited. For questions involving opioid or other analgesic conversions, an equianalgesic conversion table accompanies the item, so the skill being tested is applying the table correctly, not memorizing conversion ratios.

Two points deserve emphasis. Because the format is nonadaptive, the exam does not get harder or easier based on your answers, so there is no signal to read from question difficulty. And because 15 items are unscored pretest questions, you should treat every item as if it counts. Our deeper explanation of how the number works is in the CHPPN passing score guide.

The Five Content Domains

The exam is built from the 2026 candidate handbook (dated December 2025) and the 2023 job analysis. It is organized into five domains. The official scored-item counts, in domain order, are 24, 24, 34, 31, and 22, which total the 135 scored questions.

Notice that Domain 3 and Domain 4 together account for 65 of the 135 scored items, nearly half the exam. Candidates who treat family-centered support as "soft" content tend to underestimate it. For a section-by-section breakdown, read our complete guide to all five CHPPN exam domains.

Fees, Application Windows, and Testing Windows

Initial exam fees

The initial examination costs US$305 for HPNA members and US$445 for nonmembers. Member pricing only applies if your HPNA membership is in place before you submit the application, so join first if you intend to claim the lower fee. If you do not pass, eligible initial candidates may purchase reTEST Assured for US$135 and use it in one of the next three testing windows. A full cost comparison, including renewal, is in our CHPPN certification cost breakdown.

The calendar

The exam is offered in four testing windows each year. Each window has its own application period that closes well before testing opens:

Working backward from the application deadline is the practical way to plan: your 500- or 1,000-hour documentation, license verification, and (if applicable) HPNA membership all need to be settled before the application closes. For scheduling strategy, see the CHPPN exam dates and deadlines guide.

Scoring and Pass-Rate Data

The exam reports a scaled score on a 200-800 range, and the passing standard is 500. That is not the same as getting 500 out of 800 "points," and it is not a raw percentage of questions answered correctly. Scaling accounts for differences between exam forms so that the standard stays consistent across administrations.

HPCC's official 2025 exam statistics show:

• Overall pass rate: 89.2% (33 of 37 attempts)
• First-time test takers: 94.3% (33 of 35)
• Repeat test takers: 0% (0 of 2)

Read these carefully. They are exam-attempt statistics from a very small cohort, so a single candidate moves the percentage substantially. The repeat figure reflects just two attempts and should not be interpreted as a trend. The data is encouraging for prepared first-time candidates, but it does not justify skipping preparation. We unpack the numbers further in our CHPPN pass rate analysis and discuss perceived difficulty in how hard the CHPPN exam is.

Sequencing Your Preparation by Domain

You do not need an elaborate method; you need an order that matches how the exam is weighted and how the content builds. Because Domain 3 is the heaviest and Domain 2 depends on calculation fluency, a domain-driven sequence works well. The plan below assumes roughly eight weeks and should be adjusted to your clinical background.

If you want a fuller preparation framework, our CHPPN study guide expands on this, and the CHPPN cheat sheet condenses the must-know facts into a single review page.

Practice Resources: What Each One Actually Is

Candidates often blur together several different resources, so it is worth separating them:

• The certification examination: 150 questions, 3 hours, delivered through PSI or live remote proctoring. This is the real thing.
• HPNA's official practice product: contains 50 questions. It is useful for gauging style and content, but it is a sample, not a full-length rehearsal.
• Independently written practice simulations: produced by third parties, including our own. They can give you the stamina of a full-length sitting and broader topic coverage, but they are not official exam items and should not be described as such.

Used together, the official 50-question product shows you how HPCC writes items, while longer independent sets help you build pacing for 150 questions in 3 hours (about 72 seconds per question). You can try a full-length simulation on our CHPPN practice test site, which is designed around the five domains above.

Staying Certified: The 4-Year HPAR Cycle

CHPPN certification lasts 4 years. Renewal is handled through the Hospice and Palliative Accrual for Recertification (HPAR) process, completed in LearningBuilder, rather than by retaking the exam. Renewing nurses document both practice hours and professional development. The HPAR practice requirement mirrors the initial standard: 500 hours in the preceding 12 months or 1,000 hours in the preceding 24 months.

The structure rewards planning ahead: early renewal is the cheapest, and reactivation after a lapse is the most expensive. Over a 4-year cycle, membership status changes renewal costs by US$140 at every tier, so it is worth running the math alongside your initial exam cost. For the long-term picture, see our analysis of whether the CHPPN certification is worth it.

Where the Credential Shows Up in Practice

The nurses who pursue this credential typically work in children's hospitals with palliative care or complex care programs, pediatric hospice agencies, community-based pediatric palliative services, and specialty units such as pediatric oncology, neonatal and cardiac intensive care, and neurology where serious illness planning is routine. For these employers, certification is a visible signal that a nurse has met a nationally defined standard in a small and demanding specialty. How much it influences hiring, advancement, or pay varies by organization, so treat any salary claims with caution and consult our CHPPN salary guide and CHPPN jobs overview for context rather than assuming a guaranteed premium.

Frequently Asked Questions