Just got my results back and I missed passing by 5 points. I'm honestly pretty frustrated because I studied for about 10 weeks and felt solid going in. My weakest domains were Transitions of Care and Quality Outcomes, which makes sense since I'm an outpatient nurse and don't deal with acute transitions daily.
I'm planning to retake in 6 weeks and trying to restructure my study plan. First attempt I was doing about 1.5 hours per day using the CCMC study guide and a question bank. I got through maybe 400 practice questions total, which in retrospect wasn't nearly enough.
For the retake I'm targeting 800-1000 questions and going heavier on case scenarios rather than straight recall. The test felt very scenario-based and I felt like I was overthinking a lot of the ethics questions. Has anyone else found that the Ethics and Advocacy domain trips them up more than expected?
Would love to hear from people who failed once and then passed — specifically what you changed in your approach the second time around. Not sure if I should invest in a live review course or just grind more practice questions at this point.
Live review courses helped me mostly for structure, not content. Honestly the questions you do matter way more than any course. Don't overthink the format switch — just commit to daily practice with timed sets and review every wrong answer before moving on.
Six weeks is plenty of time if you're disciplined. I did 3 hours a day for 5 weeks and passed with a score in the low 70s. Transitions of Care is basically about what the case manager's role is at each handoff point — think setting-to-setting and who coordinates what.
I failed my first attempt by 8 points and passed the retake 3 months later with a 78%. What changed was I stopped reading chapters and just did questions for the last 4 weeks straight — minimum 50 per day. Reviewing the rationale on wrong answers is where you actually learn the material.
The Ethics and Advocacy domain got me too on my first try. Look up the CCMC Code of Ethics and really understand the hierarchy of decisions — client autonomy comes before almost everything else in their framework. Once I internalized that, those questions got much easier.
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