What Is CHPPN Certification?

What the CHPPN Credential Actually Is

CHPPN stands for Certified Hospice and Palliative Pediatric Nurse. It is a specialty nursing certification for registered nurses who care for infants, children, and adolescents with life-limiting or serious illness, and for the families who live through that experience alongside them. The credential signals that a nurse has demonstrated, through a standardized exam, the knowledge needed to assess pediatric patients, manage pain and symptoms, support families, and practice professionally in hospice and palliative settings.

Pediatric palliative nursing differs sharply from adult hospice work. Dosing is weight-based and developmentally informed. Diagnoses are often rare congenital, genetic, neurologic, metabolic, or oncologic conditions. Illness trajectories can stretch across years rather than weeks. The family unit, including siblings, is part of the care plan. The CHPPN exam is built around those realities rather than around general adult end-of-life care.

If you have seen several similar-sounding pages online, note that this article covers the pediatric hospice and palliative nursing credential specifically. For shorter explainers on the terminology itself, see What Does CHPPN Stand For? and CHPPN Meaning.

Who Awards It and How the Exam Is Delivered

The Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center (HPCC) awards the CHPPN credential. The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) is the related professional membership organization, and it provides membership and preparation resources. The two are separate roles: HPCC credentials you, HPNA supports you with membership benefits and study materials. That distinction matters in practice because HPNA membership affects the price you pay for the exam (more on that below).

The exam is delivered through PSI test centers or by live remote proctoring, so candidates without a convenient test center can still sit for the exam. It is closed book, and calculators are prohibited. For questions that require it, an equianalgesic conversion table accompanies the item, so you do not need to memorize opioid conversion factors, but you do need to know how to use such a table correctly and reason through the result.

Eligibility: License and Practice Hours

CHPPN eligibility has two components, and both must be satisfied before you apply:

1. A current, unrestricted RN license in the United States or its territories, or the Canadian equivalent.
2. Pediatric hospice/palliative nursing practice hours: either 500 hours in the preceding 12 months or 1,000 hours in the preceding 24 months.

HPCC may audit both license and practice documentation, so keep accurate records of where and when you practiced, and make sure your employer or supervisor can verify your hours if asked. The hours requirement is specific to pediatric hospice and palliative nursing, which means general pediatric or adult palliative experience may not count the way you expect. If you are unsure whether a role qualifies, review the handbook language before paying for the exam. Our guide to CHPPN requirements walks through qualification scenarios in more detail.

Exam Format and Scoring

The exam structure is straightforward but has a few details that candidates often misread:

Why "one best answer" matters

Each question has four options, and more than one may look defensible. The task is to choose the best answer, which usually means the safest, most patient- and family-centered, or most developmentally appropriate action given the scenario. Pediatric palliative questions frequently hinge on priorities: what to assess first, which intervention addresses the underlying cause, or which communication approach respects both a child's developmental stage and the parents' role.

Scaled score, not a percentage

The passing score is a scaled score of 500, not a raw percentage. Scaling adjusts for differences in difficulty between exam forms, so you cannot convert 500 into "I need to get X questions right." Because 15 items are unscored pretest questions, you also cannot tell which items count, so treat every question as if it does. For a deeper explanation, read CHPPN Passing Score.

The Five Content Domains

The exam content is based on the 2026 candidate handbook (dated December 2025) and the 2023 job analysis. Scored items are distributed across five domains. In domain order, the official scored-item counts are 24, 24, 34, 31, and 22, totaling the 135 scored questions.

Domains 3 and 4 together account for 65 of the 135 scored items, which is close to half the scored exam. If you are deciding where to put extra study time, that is where the weight sits. The full breakdown is in the CHPPN exam domains guide.

Fees, Application Windows, and Testing Windows

Initial exam cost

The initial examination costs US$305 for HPNA members and US$445 for nonmembers. The key mechanic is that membership must precede the application to obtain the member price. If you join HPNA after submitting your application, you will not receive the member rate retroactively, so confirm your membership is active first.

If you are an eligible unsuccessful initial candidate, you may use reTEST Assured for US$135 in one of the next three testing windows. Our CHPPN certification cost breakdown adds renewal and membership considerations to the picture.

Testing windows and application deadlines

The exam is offered in four testing windows each year, each paired with its own application period:

Build your timeline backward from the application deadline, not from the testing month. If you want the March window, for example, your application must be in by February 15, and your membership and practice-hour documentation must already be in order. See CHPPN exam dates for scheduling details.

What the 2025 Exam Statistics Show

HPCC publishes exam statistics, and the official 2025 figures for the CHPPN are:

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

The first-time figure is a useful reminder that candidates who meet the practice-hour requirement and prepare against the official content outline generally succeed. For context on interpreting small-sample data, see CHPPN pass rate and how hard the CHPPN exam is.

Sequencing Your Preparation Around the Domains

Rather than a generic study calendar, plan your sequence around how the domains build on each other and where the points are. One reasonable CHPPN-specific order:

Starting with Domain 3 makes sense because diagnoses and symptoms feed directly into pain, family teaching, and planning questions. For a broader plan, see the CHPPN study guide, and keep the CHPPN cheat sheet handy for last-week review.

Know your practice-question sources

Be clear about what each resource is. HPNA's official practice product contains 50 questions, which is a useful sample of style but is not the 150-question certification exam and not a full-length simulation. Independently written practice tests and simulations, including those on our CHPPN practice test site, serve a different purpose: giving you volume, pacing practice, and explanations. Using both gives you a realistic feel for the style of the exam plus enough repetitions to find your gaps.

Staying Certified: The HPAR Renewal Process

CHPPN certification lasts 4 years. Renewal is handled through the Hospice and Palliative Accrual for Recertification (HPAR) process, managed in LearningBuilder. Rather than retaking the exam, you document your ongoing practice hours and professional development.

HPAR practice eligibility mirrors the initial standard: 500 hours in the preceding 12 months or 1,000 hours in the preceding 24 months. Renewal fees depend on membership status and timing:

The pattern is clear: renewing early and maintaining HPNA membership is the cheapest path, and letting the credential lapse into reactivation is the most expensive. Start tracking professional-development activity from the day you earn the credential rather than scrambling in year four.

Where the Credential Fits in a Pediatric Palliative Career

CHPPN-certified nurses work wherever seriously ill children receive care: pediatric hospice agencies, children's hospital palliative care teams, home-based pediatric programs, and organizations serving children with complex chronic conditions. For employers, the credential is a verifiable signal of specialty knowledge in a field where on-the-job experience varies widely. For nurses, it can support credibility with interdisciplinary teams and families, and it may strengthen candidacy for specialty roles.

Whether the credential translates into higher pay or new roles depends on your employer and region, so avoid assuming a specific outcome. To weigh the investment, review the CHPPN ROI analysis, explore CHPPN jobs, and see the CHPPN salary guide. For related terminology explainers, see What Is CHPPN? and CHPPN Certification.

Frequently Asked Questions