Documentation of 10 Contact Hours &
Professional Practice Learning (PPL)

The PNCB has increased the opportunities available for you to document the ways you have maintained and expanded your knowledge and skills through Professional Practice Learning (PPL).

You may now document 10 pediatric-related contact hours earned from accredited Continuing Education (CE) or Continuing Medical Education (CME) in combination with a PPL. Select only one PPL to use for this CE + PPL combination option. Each of the PPL activities below is equivalent to 5 contact hours for your Recert.

• Lecture presentations and academic lectures
• Scholarly posters
• Authorship of a peer-reviewed journal article or textbook contributions
• Preceptorship of nursing students: 80 hours
• Clinical Practice: 200 hours within 12 months of Recert enrollment
• Academic Credit: 1-3 semester or quarter credit hours

Academic Credit:

Academic credit coursework must be successfully completed, earned within 24 months of submission of your Recertification enrollment and cannot be the same as reported in a previous year. Coursework must be relevant to pediatric nursing or nursing leadership.

Contact Hours Component:

The same policies apply for 10 contact hours as for the 15 contact hour option. For acceptable content, agencies, and more, visit the Contact Hours webpage to learn about that portion of this combination documentation option.

Clinical Practice Hours

What do you mean by clinical practice hours? Clinical practice hours are work or volunteer hours that involve the direct "hands-on" assessment or clinical management of pediatric patients.

The following guidelines apply:

• The clinical practice must have occurred within the past year (12 months).
• A minimum of 200 hours of direct clinical practice is required.
• All clinical practice requirements must have been met while the CPN® held an active registered nurse license in the state or territory in which the clinical practice occurred.
• Clinical practice hours should reflect direct "hands-on" assessment and clinical management of children. Practice time does not include the management, supervision or education of other personnel or students to help achieve patient care goals.
• Clinical practice hours may be volunteer time spent providing direct pediatric nursing care.
  

Preceptor Hours:

Follow these guidelines for pediatric nursing preceptor activity:

• A minimum of eighty (80) hours of preceptor activity with pediatric nurses focused on mastery of pediatric clinical content is required. CPNs can count precepting of RN or BSN students but not practical nurses. These must be hours spent teaching a clinical component of your practice and not patient charting or teaching hospital specific policy and procedures.
• All preceptor requirements must have been met while the CPN® held an active registered RN license or authorization in the state or territory in which the preceptorship occurred.
• Preceptor hours cannot be used to meet the clinical practice recertification option.
• Preceptor hours must have occurred within the past 24 months prior to submission of your Recertification enrollment.

Do you need to see documentation?

Please do not mail or fax us copies of your documentation. We'll only need to see these certificates if you are selected in our annual random audit. When you fill out your online or paper application, you will attest that the information you submitted is true.