All access information and course materials will be sent to your email address on file 3-5 days before the day of the course. A reminder email with this information will also be sent the days before the course begins.
- Click the HPNA University link on the website.
- Log in once the window opens.
- On the HPNA University page, you will see a column of links to the left of the page.
- Click your course classroom link to access your course.
- Send an email to the HPNA Education Department if you have any questions.
- Click the HPNA University link on the website.
- Log in once the window opens.
- On the HPNA University page, select Live Evaluations in the list to the left of the screen to locate the icon to access this course.
- You will find the courses that are available for evaluation.
- Evaluations must be completed before the stated course deadline.
- Send an email to the HPNA Education Department if you have any questions.
You can download any certificate that you have completed by following the below steps.
- Log into HPNA University.
- Click on My Profile on the left-hand side.
- Then select View Course transcript on the right side.
- You will see something similar to this:
- Hit the download button for the needed certificate.
- Send an email to the HPNA Education Department if you have any questions.
You can download any certificate that you have completed by following the below steps.
Contact the HPNA Education Department for assistance.
Contact the HPNA Education Department for assistance.
The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association and the Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center created the Employer Partner Program to partner with employers and support their nursing care teams through education and certification. Employers may participate through individual staff discounts or through organizational participation.
To become a member of the Employer Partner Program through individual or organizational involvement, or to request additional information, contact Todd Smith.
All sales are final and nonrefundable.
Polaris, or the North Star, has been historically used as a guide to navigate a journey. It is a focal point – the point around which the entire northern sky turns. Situated almost directly over the North Pole, it never sets. That’s what makes Polaris excellent for measurement and navigation.
Polaris is regarded as the most important star in the sky. It’s been known by many names: The Pathway, the Pointer, the Steering Star, or the Lodestar that indicates the way.
Let the POLARIS modules serve as your guide – lighting the path ahead – allowing you to recognize your aims, pursue them, and achieve them.
HPNA’s mission is to “advance expert care in serious illness.” POLARIS can provide your sense of direction as you care for patients and families who look to you in their time of need.
The modules are separated so that the content is delivered in smaller portions of a few hours at most. This was designed to facilitate completing each module and the associated evaluation in a single setting. Once the learner receives their CE certificate for each module, access to the module’s content remains available to the registered user for future reference use.
The learner guide assists the user in providing a structured approach to orientation. It gives a clear template of required completion activities for each module assigned by their preceptor. The guide includes all learning activities, resources, and tools, as well as completion checklists to discuss with preceptors.
The preceptor guide gives the preceptor a structured approach to the learner’s orientation. It provides a recommendation schedule for moving through orientation, as well as a handbook on additional discussions related to learning activities, resources, and tools.
Yes, a CE certificate designating the CE award will be provided to learners completing the assigned modules.
POLARIS RN
POLARIS RN is designed for early career hospice and palliative nurses. This includes nurses from other specialties who are unfamiliar with hospice and palliative nursing, new graduate nurses, and those beginning their career in hospice and palliative nursing.
Yes, POLARIS is intended for registered nurses’ scope of practice.
POLARIS RN modules are based on essential practice knowledge in hospice and palliative nursing. Content includes an overview of hospice and palliative nursing, components of interdisciplinary teamwork, communication, holistic assessment, pain assessment and interventions, symptom management, illness progression and urgent syndromes, care of patients nearing the end of life, ethical issues, and self-care strategies.
The POLARIS RN Orientation Program includes a learner guide and preceptor guide to assist as you progress through the 13 eLearning modules of POLARIS RN. This will provide a structured and comprehensive approach to orientation.
Yes, as a learner you will receive a certificate of completion to add to your professional development resume. This POLARIS RN Completion Certificate is in addition to your individual module CE certificate awarding your CE credits and presented to learners that successfully complete all 13 modules within the POLARIS RN course.
The POLARIS RN Orientation Program is intended for an individual user. Each individual employee will receive their own access to the program, and it is not intended for multiple users to access the individual program. The course is linked to the user’s HPNA account through which the CE certificate of attendance is issued upon successful completion.
Each purchased POLARIS RN Orientation Program allows a single user to access the program. To receive the CE certificate and certificate of attendance upon successful completion, individuals must use their own unique account.
Please email the HPNA Education Department to connect with a nursing subject matter expert on POLARIS RN.
Yes, contact the HPNA Membership Department.
Contact HPNA at 412-787-9301, option 1.
Contact HPNA at 412-787-9301, option 1.
Yes, contact the HPNA Membership Department.
Yes, contact the HPNA Membership Department.
Visit the donate page. After choosing your donation amount, you will notice a box that says, “is this donation in honor or in memory of someone?”. Click on that box and follow the prompts. HPNF will send an acknowledgment to both the donor and designated contact if requested.
Tribute gifts are a great way to honor and carry on the legacy of someone close to your heart, and they are a wonderful way to say thank you to nurses while honoring the work they do. To invite others to support HPNF in honor or memory of a loved one, click here to “Create a Team”.
For more information, contact HPNF.
View the list of HPNF’s scholarships and their application windows. To start your application, click on the “More About ____ Scholarship” button. If this is your first time completing an online application, you will need to create a new account. If you’ve already started or completed an online application, click the “log in to apply” button. You will be taken to the application dashboard, which highlights the application requirements. Contact the Foundation with any questions about the application process.
Florence Wald Champions are special philanthropists who demonstrate their commitment to quality, end-of-life care by pledging to contribute $10,000 to HPNF over the course of a maximum of five years. These generous donors ensure funds are available to nurses and other healthcare professionals for education and research in the advancement of the rapidly growing and increasingly important hospice and palliative nursing specialty while honoring Florence S. Wald, MN, MS, FAAN, the “mother of hospice and palliative care.”
To learn more about the Florence Wald Champion program, click here.
Below is a list of frequently asked questions about the Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center and the credentialing process. Please contact HPCC at 412-787-1057 or by email if you have any additional questions.
The Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center Board of Directors is a competence-based board comprised of a minimum of seven voting directors and a maximum of two non-voting ex officio directors. Board members represent a wide variety of geographic areas, practice settings, and educational backgrounds. HPCC is responsible for the development and oversight of certification for the specialty of nursing in hospice and palliative care.
Hospice and palliative care is the provision of care for the patient with serious illness and their family, with emphasis on their physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs. This is accomplished in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team in diverse settings including inpatient, home, or residence hospice; acute care hospitals or palliative care units; long-term care facilities; rehabilitation facilities; home settings; ambulatory or outpatient palliative care primary care or specialty clinics; veterans’ facilities; correctional facilities; homeless shelters; and mental health settings. Hospice and palliative interdisciplinary team members serve in a variety of roles including expert clinicians, educators, researchers, administrators, consultants, case managers, program developers/coordinators, and policymakers. Moreover, hospice and palliative care includes holistic assessment of the patient and family, offering information to allow more informed decision-making, meticulous pain and symptom management, determination and optimization of functional status, and support of coping patterns.
Certification validates an individual’s competence and knowledge in the specialized area of hospice and palliative care. Certification is highly valued and provides formal recognition of having achieved a standard of knowledge in the specialty of hospice and palliative care. Research studies confirm the value placed on certification.
Certified individuals have achieved formal recognition of their knowledge, experience, and confidence. HPCC certification provides benefits and advantages for continued personal and professional growth.
Eligibility varies for each HPCC certification exam. All eligibility requirements are outlined in the Candidate Handbook or can be found on each credentials page on the website.
A candidate can apply for the HPCC certification exams online or by paper. The paper exam application can be found in the back of the Candidate Handbook and must be mailed to and received by the testing company, PSI, by the deadline posted in the handbook. The Candidate Handbook contains all application windows and deadlines.
All HPCC certification exams are computer-based exams and are given at approximately 200 PSI/AMP approved test site locations.
A detailed content outline of the information that may be covered on each exam is provided in the Candidate Handbook. Each exam consists of multiple-choice questions along with pretest questions. The content is formulated from a national survey known as a Role Delineation Study (RDS). The breakdown is provided below:
- ACHPN® exam: 175 items (questions) with 3 ½ hours for test completion
- CHPN® exam: 150 items (questions) with 3 hours for test completion
- CHPPN® exam: 150 items (questions) with 3 hours for test completion
- CHPNA® exam: 110 items (questions) with 2 1/2 hours for test completion
- CHPLN® exam: 150 items (questions) with 3 hours for test completion
The multiple-choice examinations contain items (questions) that do not count toward candidates’ scores but are being pretested to use as scored items on future versions of the examinations.
Pretesting is accomplished by interspersing a small number of new, untried questions throughout the examination, so candidates will answer them with the same care they would answer questions to be scored. Only a small number are included so that additional testing time will not be needed by the candidates. The pretest questions are not used to compute the candidates’ scores. The performance of the pretest questions is later evaluated, and questions that perform well may be included as scored questions on a future examination.
Using the pretesting methodology promotes fairness to all candidates by ensuring examinees that their test scores are the result of sound measurement practices and that the scored questions are reflective of current practice. Also, it is the only way for HPCC to issue immediate scores to candidates. Developing a test using items that have not been pretested could lead to examinations of different levels of difficulty, which could have cut scores that do not represent an appropriate level of knowledge deserving of certification, which would not be fair to candidates.
Persons applying for the certification exam who are current HPNA members PRIOR to applying for the HPCC exam are entitled to the HPNA member discounted exam fee as a membership benefit. Each certification has a fee listed on its main web page.
In addition to the discounted rate for HPNA members, the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation offers certification scholarships for both certification and recertification.
Candidates that sit for and pass the HPCC exams are granted the following credential:
- ACHPN® – Advanced Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse
- CHPN® – Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse
- CHPPN® – Certified Hospice and Palliative Pediatric Nurse
- CHPNA® – Certified Hospice and Palliative Nursing Assistant
- CPLC® – Certified in Perinatal Loss Care
- CHPLN® – Certified Hospice and Palliative Licensed Nurse
Are the HPCC certification exams accredited? The ACHPN® and CHPN® exams are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Specialty Nursing Certification (ABSNC).
The ACHPN® and CHPN® exams are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Specialty Nursing Certification (ABSNC).
The receipts come from our testing company, PSI/AMP. You can request a receipt by contacting them at 888-519-9901 or AMPExamServices@goAMP.com.
Certification is valid for a period of four (4) years at which time the candidate must renew their certification.
Find details about renewal for each certification program on the website under each individual credential.
Once certified, the individual is:
- Entitled to use the appropriate credentials: ACHPN®-Advanced Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse; CHPN®-Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse; CHPPN®-Certified Hospice and Palliative Pediatric Nurse; CHPNA®-Certified Hospice and Palliative Nursing Assistant; CPLC®-Certified in Perinatal Loss Care; CHPLN®-Certified Hospice and Palliative Licensed Nurse; CHPCA®-Certified Hospice and Palliative Care Administrator.
- Eligible to serve on the HPCC Board of Directors, Examination Development Committee or join HPCC project teams.
- Honored at the annual certification recognition event.
- Provided the HPCC certification newsletter.
- Eligible for a discount with renewal of certification.
- Eligible for HPCC and Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation awards, scholarships, and grants. Able to access a national network of experienced and knowledgeable hospice and palliative professionals.
- Certificants achieve a tested and proven competence across the spectrum of hospice and palliative care.
- Certificants increase their knowledge of hospice and palliative care by seeking and maintaining certification.
- Certificants demonstrate a commitment to their specialty practice by pursuing certification.
- Certificants demonstrate dedication to professional development in their careers by attaining the credential.
- Certificants are assets to themselves because the commitment to certification improves patient outcomes, provides compensation incentives, and gains industry-wide recognition.
- Certificants are assets to their employers because board certification is a recognized quality marker by patients, physicians, providers, quality organizations, insurers, credentialers, and the federal government in an atmosphere of increasing awareness regarding quality in health care and appropriate utilization of services.
For the PSI/Applied Measurement Professionals (AMP) Assessment Location pages/maps, please see the links below. Locations are the same for the APRN, RN, Pediatric RN, NA, and Perinatal Loss exams, however, each exam has its own map.
Our certification exams use scaled scores, which are reported to you in printed form only, in person or by United States mail. The minimum scaled score needed to pass an examination is 75 scaled score units, and the score report will indicate whether you passed or failed. Each candidate handbook has a more detailed explanation of why scaled scores are used, and we suggest you review that information in the handbook if you have questions. The information below is intended to supplement the candidate handbook and answer some of the commonly asked questions. If you need further information or have additional questions, contact HPCC at 412-787-1057 or by email.
They are used to provide a consistent scale of measurement so that from one test administration to the next, the same scaled score represents the same level of knowledge.
This may provide useful information about your performance on different parts of the test but does not take into account the difficulty of the items.
No. Calculation of a percent correct is a way to convert a raw score to another scale, but a scaled score is not the same as a percent correct. You could calculate percentage scores by dividing the number correct by the total, for example, a raw score of 9 in a category with 15 total items relates to a 60% correct.
When reviewing your raw scores for the major categories, bear in mind that all categories are not equally difficult. However, small variations in your subscores probably do not reflect important differences. One more correct answer in a category with 15 items would increase your percent correct score in that category by about seven percentage points.
Similar to a raw score, converting your score to a percentage score would not take the difficulty of the items into account.
To calculate a scaled score, the raw score required to pass is first set equal to 75. An analogous situation is with temperature: 0 degree and 32 degrees both represent freezing on different temperature scales. Raw scores below the passing point are converted in linear fashion to scaled scores below 75; those above the passing point are similarly converted to scaled scores above 75.
The amount of knowledge required to pass the test is based on the judgments of the content experts who develop the examinations. The raw score required to pass relates to the number of correct answers that a minimally competent (borderline) candidate would be expected to provide, and this raw score is set equal to 75 scaled score units. Different raw scores may be required of different test forms, because all examinations are not equally difficult. The scaled score of 75 required to pass indicates that, while a different number of correct answers may be required from one administration to the next, the passing point for all examinations represents the same level of knowledge.