ANCC Study Guide 2026
Everything you need to pass the ANCC exam in one place: the exam format, every topic to study, real practice questions with explanations, flashcards, and full-length practice tests. Free, no sign-up needed.
ANCC exam key facts
- The ANCC Family Nurse Practitioner exam contains 175 questions, consisting of 150 scored items and 25 unscored pretest questions. Source
- ANCC examination results are reported as pass or fail, requiring a scaled score of 350 or higher on a maximum scale of 500 to pass. Source
- Initial certification exam registration for the ANCC Family Nurse Practitioner certification costs $395 for non-members and $295 for American Nurses Association members. Source
- Candidates who do not pass an ANCC certification examination may retest after 60 calendar days, up to a maximum of three times in any 12-month period. Source
- The ANCC Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP-BC) credential is valid for five years. Source
📋 ANCC Exam Format at a Glance
📚 ANCC Topics to Study (35)
✍️ Sample ANCC Questions & Answers
1. During a mental status exam, a patient demonstrates flight of ideas. This finding is most consistent with which condition?
Flight of ideas — rapidly shifting, loosely connected thoughts — is a hallmark feature of manic episodes.
2. A nurse leader implementing shared governance is most focused on which goal?
Shared governance distributes decision-making authority to frontline nurses, promoting autonomy and professional practice.
3. A patient with acute pancreatitis is NPO and requesting pain relief. Which analgesic is preferred?
Hydromorphone is preferred for pancreatitis pain; meperidine is avoided due to toxic normeperidine metabolites, and morphine may cause sphincter of Oddi spasm.
4. When counseling a patient about emergency contraception, the nurse practitioner should teach that Plan B (levonorgestrel) is most effective when taken within:
Plan B is most effective when taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, though it has some efficacy up to 120 hours.
5. A patient with PAD reports cramping calf pain after walking two blocks that reliably resolves with rest. This symptom pattern is called:
Intermittent claudication is reproducible ischemic muscle pain during exercise that reliably resolves with rest, resulting from inadequate arterial flow to meet muscle oxygen demands during exertion.
6. Which mnemonic is most useful for performing a comprehensive pain assessment?
OLDCARTS is a comprehensive pain assessment mnemonic covering all essential dimensions: Onset, Location, Duration, Character, Alleviating/Aggravating factors, Radiation, Timing, and Severity.
🎯 Free ANCC Practice Tests
📖 ANCC Guides & Articles
What Practice Test Geeks adds beyond an AI chat for ANCC
An AI chatbot can quiz you, but it can't reproduce the exam conditions or keep your record. Here you get:
- A timed, full-length ANCC mock exam — 150 questions in 180 minutes with a 70% pass mark, modeled on the official exam's question count and time limit, followed by a score report broken down by exam domain.
- A fixed ANCC question bank: the same test every attempt, so your score is comparable from one try to the next instead of changing with every regenerated quiz.
- Progress saved on your device: completed tests, scores and missed questions stay in My Progress, so you can retake only what you got wrong.
- A printable ANCC cheat sheet you can print or save as a PDF.
- ANCC flashcards built from the same question bank.
- Free ANCC practice tests with the correct answer shown after each question.
How this page was made: written with AI tools and published by Nathan Beja, founder of Practice Test Geeks, who is responsible for its content. Exam facts are checked against the official sources listed below. Not reviewed by a subject-matter expert. Editorial policy
Sources & references
Exam facts on this page (fees, format, dates, passing scores) are checked against these official sources; the date is our last check. Editorial policy
- nursingworld.org — Fees, exam format, test dates, score validity, retake policy, test delivery, passing score, exam information · verified Oct 2026