- A CHPN is a Registered Nurse certified by HPCC for competence in hospice and palliative nursing.
- Eligibility requires an active RN license plus 500 hours in 12 months or 1,000 hours in 24 months.
- The exam has 150 questions (135 scored) in 3 hours, scored on a 200-800 scale with 500 to pass.
- Symptom Management, Support/Education/Advocacy, and Practice Issues each make up about 20.7% of the exam.
What Is A CHPN, Exactly?
CHPN stands for Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse. It's a specialty nursing credential that verifies a Registered Nurse has the clinical knowledge and hands-on experience needed to care for patients with serious, life-limiting illness. Unlike a general nursing license, the CHPN is voluntary - nurses pursue it to demonstrate expertise beyond baseline RN competency in areas like pain control, symptom relief, and end-of-life family support.
If you've landed here after searching variations like What Is CHPN?, CHPN Meaning, or What Does CHPN Stand For?, this article covers the same core answer with more operational detail: how the exam is built, who's eligible, and what it actually tests. For a broader look at the credential itself, see our companion piece on CHPN Certification.
Who Runs the CHPN Credential
The CHPN certification is governed by the Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center (HPCC), which is affiliated with the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA). HPCC sets the eligibility rules, builds the content outline, and determines passing standards. Actual test delivery is handled by PSI, which offers both computer-based testing at physical PSI test centers and live remote proctoring for candidates who prefer to test from home or another approved location.
This two-organization structure matters practically: HPNA membership affects your exam fee, while PSI controls your scheduling options, accommodations requests, and testing-day logistics. Understanding this split helps when you're troubleshooting registration issues or trying to figure out where to direct a question.
Who Qualifies to Sit for the Exam
Eligibility for the CHPN exam is built around active licensure plus recent clinical experience, not a specific degree or years-since-graduation requirement. Specifically, candidates need:
- A current, unrestricted, active RN license in the United States or its territories, or the equivalent in Canada
- 500 hours of hospice and palliative nursing practice within the most recent 12 months, or
- 1,000 hours of hospice and palliative nursing practice within the most recent 24 months
There's no separate education requirement layered on top - the hours-based pathway is designed to recognize nurses who are actively practicing in the field, whether in a hospice agency, a palliative care consult team, a long-term care facility, or an acute care setting with a dedicated comfort-care unit.
Key Takeaway
Track your hospice/palliative hours now if you're not sure you'll hit 500 in the last 12 months - the 1,000-hour/24-month path gives you a longer runway to qualify without waiting an extra year.
Exam Format, Fees, and Scoring
The CHPN exam consists of 150 multiple-choice questions, each with four answer options. Of those, 135 are scored and 15 are unscored pretest items used by HPCC to evaluate future questions - you won't know which is which, so every question deserves full attention. Candidates get 3 hours to complete the exam.
Scoring uses a scaled range of 200 to 800, and the passing score is 500. This scaled approach means your result isn't a simple raw percentage - it accounts for the relative difficulty of the specific question set you received. For a deeper breakdown of what the scaled score actually reflects and how HPCC's published statistics translate into real-world outcomes, see CHPN Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Total Questions | 150 (135 scored, 15 unscored pretest) |
| Time Limit | 3 hours |
| Question Format | Four-option multiple choice |
| Passing Score | 500 (scale of 200-800) |
| Fee (HPNA Member) | $305 |
| Fee (Non-Member) | $445 |
| reTEST Assured | $135 |
| Transfer Fee | $110 (when applicable) |
Fee structure rewards HPNA membership, and the reTEST Assured option gives candidates a discounted retest path if things don't go well on the first attempt. If you're mapping out a budget for the full certification journey - including study materials, membership, and renewal costs down the road - check out CHPN Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown.
The Five CHPN Content Domains
The exam content outline is organized into five domains, and understanding their relative weight is one of the most useful things you can do before you start studying. Three domains are tied at roughly 20.7% each, making them the largest single blocks of the exam, while Pain Management and Assessment/Planning - though slightly smaller by percentage - form the clinical foundation that the other domains build on.
Domain 1: Patient Care - Assessment and Planning (18.5%)
Covers how nurses gather clinical data, identify goals of care, and build individualized plans for patients with serious illness.
- Comprehensive symptom and functional assessment
- Advance care planning and goal-setting conversations
Domain 2: Patient Care - Pain Management (19.3%)
Focuses on pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic pain control strategies specific to serious and terminal illness.
- Opioid conversion, titration, and side-effect management
- Barriers to adequate pain control in hospice settings
Domain 3: Patient Care - Symptom Management (20.7%)
Addresses management of non-pain symptoms common at end of life, such as dyspnea, nausea, delirium, and fatigue.
- Recognizing and managing terminal symptom clusters
- Distinguishing expected disease progression from treatable complications
Domain 4: Support, Education, and Advocacy (20.7%)
Covers communication with patients, families, and interdisciplinary teams, plus culturally sensitive support through grief and loss.
- Family and caregiver education strategies
- Advocacy for patient wishes across care settings
Domain 5: Practice Issues (20.7%)
Encompasses ethical, legal, and regulatory considerations unique to hospice and palliative nursing practice.
- Regulatory requirements for hospice eligibility and recertification
- Ethical dilemmas around withdrawing or withholding treatment
For a full breakdown of each domain's subtopics and sample question styles, our dedicated guide - CHPN Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 5 Content Areas - goes deeper than what fits here. We also have standalone study guides for individual domains, including Domain 1: Assessment and Planning, Domain 2: Pain Management, Domain 3: Symptom Management, and Domain 4: Support, Education, and Advocacy.
Who Hires CHPNs
Employers value the CHPN credential because it signals a nurse can independently manage complex symptom burden, difficult family conversations, and end-of-life clinical decisions without heavy oversight. Common employment settings include:
- Hospice agencies (home-based and inpatient hospice units)
- Hospital-based palliative care consult teams
- Long-term care and skilled nursing facilities with palliative programs
- Oncology units where comfort-focused care is a major component
- Home health organizations with serious-illness or transitional care lines
Many organizations list CHPN as "preferred" rather than required on job postings, but it frequently influences hiring decisions and can support case management or charge nurse advancement. If you're weighing whether the credential is worth pursuing for your career trajectory, Is the CHPN Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 and CHPN Salary Guide 2026: Complete Earnings Analysis both dig into that question directly. You can also browse current openings through CHPN Jobs.
A Domain-Aware Way to Prepare
Because Symptom Management, Support/Education/Advocacy, and Practice Issues each carry the heaviest weight, it makes sense to allocate more review time to those three domains - without neglecting Pain Management and Assessment/Planning, which underpin nearly every scenario-based question you'll see across the other domains.
Assessment, Planning, and Pain Management
- Review comprehensive assessment tools and pain scales
- Drill opioid conversion and titration scenarios
Symptom Management
- Study non-pain symptom clusters (dyspnea, delirium, nausea)
- Practice distinguishing disease progression from reversible causes
Support, Education, and Advocacy
- Review family communication and grief-support frameworks
- Work through advocacy and cultural-sensitivity scenarios
Practice Issues and Full Review
- Study regulatory and ethical content specific to hospice practice
- Take full-length timed practice sets on our practice test platform
This is not a rigid formula - some candidates need more time on Pain Management math, others need more repetition on Practice Issues regulations. What matters is weighting your study time to match the exam's actual domain percentages rather than studying everything equally. For a complete week-by-week plan with more detail, see CHPN Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt, and if you're trying to gauge how much total prep time to budget, How Hard Is the CHPN Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026 breaks down what makes it challenging.
Staying Certified After You Pass
CHPN certification is valid for 4 years. Renewal doesn't require retaking the full 150-question exam. Instead, HPCC uses its HPAR (Hospice and Palliative Accountability and Renewal) process, which combines a Situational Judgment Exercise, verification of ongoing practice-hour requirements, and documented professional development completed during your final certification year. This model rewards nurses who stay actively engaged in the field rather than testing on a rigid four-year clock disconnected from real practice.
Key Takeaway
Start tracking professional development activities well before your final certification year - HPAR renewal depends on documentation, and scrambling in the last few months creates unnecessary stress.
Frequently Asked Questions
CHPN stands for Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse, a credential issued by the Hospice and Palliative Credentialing Center (HPCC) to Registered Nurses who meet specific practice-hour and licensure requirements and pass the certification exam. For a broader explanation, see What Does CHPN Mean?
The exam has 150 multiple-choice questions total: 135 scored items across the five content domains and 15 unscored pretest items you can't distinguish from the scored questions. Candidates have 3 hours to complete the exam.
You need a scaled score of 500 on a 200-800 scale. This isn't a raw percentage - it's a scaled result that accounts for the specific set of scored questions you received.
The initial certification fee is $305 for HPNA members and $445 for non-members. reTEST Assured costs $135, and a transfer fee of $110 applies when relevant. Full pricing context is available in CHPN Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown.
No specific degree beyond RN licensure is required. You need a current, unrestricted, active RN license plus either 500 hours of hospice/palliative nursing practice in the last 12 months or 1,000 hours in the last 24 months.
CHPN certification is valid for 4 years. Renewal is completed through HPCC's HPAR process, which involves a Situational Judgment Exercise, verification of practice hours, and professional development documentation rather than a full retest.