The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) has a certification program for psychiatric and mental health nursing. A psychiatric nurse with certain experience in the field can get certified by taking the certification exam required by ANCC.
ANCC has some generic requirements for all of its certifications. The first is that all applicants must be currently licensed as a registered nurse. LPN or LVN nurses do not qualify for psychiatric and mental health nurse certification. All of these nurses must also have at least two years of full-time experience after getting licensed as a registered nurse. For those who just became an RN, you should start studying now if you wish to get certified for psychiatric nursing after that time passes.
Separately, there is also a requirement of 2000 hours of work experience in the field of psychiatric mental health nursing in the three years before the date of the exam application. Finally, each RN must have had 30 hours of continuing education credits over that same period. The CE credit must be in psychiatric and mental health nursing.
Eligible applicants should download an application from the ANCC website and start collecting the relevant information. Meanwhile, they can be studying for the psychiatric and mental health examination. There are a few price points for the certification exam. It is generally $395. However, members of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association pay a reduced fee of $290. Similarly, members of the American Nurses Association pay the lowest fee of $270. An extra $125 is required for international testing of the psychiatric nursing exam. Keep in mind that $140 of all application fees are nonrefundable.
Use the ANCC test content outline together with the textbooks and journals on the exam references list to study for the certification exam. You can find links to these resources in the links below. It is quite a large list of references to purchase. Hopefully, you have an existing employer who can provide some of these references for study purposes.
ANCC also has some free practice test questions online. Try to answer those after studying the relevant exam references. Go back to the books and strengthen any weak topics you uncover when testing yourself with the practice questions.
Resources:
American Nurses Credentialing Center: Psychiatric and Mental Health Nurse Certification Application
ANCC: Psychiatric Nursing Test Content Outline
ANCC: Exam Reference List
ANCC: Psychiatric and Mental Health Nurse Certification Test Practice Questions