Part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog: PassProfessor is building CCRN practice as its own program in the nursing catalog — 1,750 original practice questions written to the AACN Certification Corporation’s CCRN (Adult) test plan, with an explanation for every question. Join the notify list and we will email you when enrollment opens.
This program is part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog — join the notify list and we’ll email you when enrollment opens.
The CCRN (Adult) certification is awarded by the AACN Certification Corporation to registered nurses and advanced practice registered nurses who care for acutely and critically ill adult patients. Its examination administers 150 questions in 3 hours, of which 125 are scored, and AACN publishes its passing standard as a raw count: 83 correct of 125 scored items. PassProfessor’s CCRN Exam Prep holds 1,750 original practice questions, with an explanation for every question, built to the current Adult test plan.
Adult only — stated plainly, at the front
This program prepares candidates for one examination: the CCRN (Adult) certification examination of the AACN Certification Corporation, the credentialing arm of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. In the PassProfessor catalog this program carries the descriptive roster name Critical Care Registered Nurse. That roster name describes the nurses the program serves — registered nurses who care for critically ill patients. It is a program descriptor, nothing more.
The boundary matters because the CCRN credential family has more than one population. CCRN (Pediatric) and CCRN (Neonatal) are separate AACN examinations, with their own test plans, their own eligible populations, and their own standards. This program does not prepare candidates for either of them, and nothing in this bank is written for them: every scenario in the bank involves an adult patient. One point of scope deserves care rather than confusion. The Adult test plan’s Multisystem group includes life-threatening maternal and fetal complications, because caring for a critically ill pregnant adult is adult critical care. That content is in scope here precisely because the patient is an adult; it is not pediatric or neonatal material, and the bank treats it that way.
If you are preparing for the Adult examination, this page is written for you. If your practice is pediatric or neonatal, this is not your program, and we would rather say so here than have you discover it later.
What the program covers
1,750 original practice questions, each with an explanation. The bank is built and verified: 1,750 questions written for PassProfessor, and an explanation for every question — not a bare answer key. Each explanation teaches the reasoning the question tests: why the keyed answer is right, and what separates it from the closest alternatives. None of the questions is an actual examination item, a recalled item, or another provider’s material.
Built to the current Adult test plan. The bank follows the AACN Adult test plan effective November 12, 2025, derived from AACN’s 2024 study of practice. That currency is deliberate. An earlier version of the test plan carried different weights, and those earlier weights are retired; preparation built to them rehearses the wrong shape of examination. This bank’s shape — group by group, in the table below — is the current plan’s shape.
Organized by the plan’s six groups, so weak ground shows early. Every question sits in one of the test plan’s six groups: five Clinical Judgment groups and Professional Caring and Ethical Practice. Your practice results can therefore be read group by group, and a thin group shows while there is still time to repair it, instead of hiding inside an overall score.
Written the way the examination is written. The questions are multiple-choice, single-best-answer items, and they use generic medication names only, following AACN’s own direction on medication naming. The clinical reasoning they exercise is the reasoning the test plan describes: assessing and evaluating, prioritizing, recognizing emergencies, initiating interventions, and seeking assistance. No question in the bank asks you to recite a code, a section number, or a citation — clinical knowledge is tested, citations never are.
A timed practice form plus group drills — our design, stated plainly. The program is organized around a timed practice form of 125 questions in 180 minutes, together with six group drills drawn from the bank, one for each test-plan group. That form is a preparation design PassProfessor chose, mirroring the length and pace of a real sitting; it is not a claim about how AACN or PSI administers the examination. The real examination’s own recorded facts stand in their own table below.
The program at a glance
| CCRN (Adult) program | Detail |
|---|---|
| Certification served | CCRN (Adult), awarded by the AACN Certification Corporation |
| Population | Adult only |
| Practice questions | 1,750 original questions |
| Explanations | An explanation for every question |
| Built to | The AACN Adult test plan effective November 12, 2025 |
| Groups | Cardiovascular · Respiratory · Endocrine, Hematologic, GI, Renal and Integumentary · Musculoskeletal, Neurologic and Behavioral · Multisystem · Professional Caring and Ethical Practice |
| Price | $79 |
| Status | In the works — enrollment opens through the notify list |
- The price is a PassProfessor price. The $79 above is what this program will cost when enrollment opens. It is not AACN’s examination fee; the examination’s own verified fees are stated separately below, with their member and nonmember labels.
- The passing standard is a raw count, not a percentage. AACN publishes the Adult passing standard as 83 correct of 125 scored items, and states it as a raw count. This page states it exactly that way and converts it to nothing. Where this program uses 70, 70 is a PRACTICE BENCHMARK ONLY — a study target we set, not AACN’s standard.
- Our bank’s counts are ours; the real examination’s facts are its own. The 1,750 questions and the group counts on this page describe PassProfessor’s practice bank; the real examination’s recorded facts are set out separately below.
The real exam at a glance
| Fact of record | CCRN (Adult) |
|---|---|
| Certifying body | AACN Certification Corporation |
| Administered questions | 150 — 125 scored plus 25 pretest |
| Time | 3 hours |
| Format | Multiple-choice, single best answer |
| Delivery | PSI — testing center or live remote proctoring |
| Passing standard | 83 correct of 125 scored items (raw count) |
| Initial examination fee | $260 AACN member / $375 nonmember |
The pretest questions are part of the sitting but do not count toward your result, and the sitting does not identify which questions they are. The passing standard above is set by a modified Angoff process and applies to the total examination, not to any single group — a point the scoring note below takes up directly.
How the practice maps to the test plan
| Test-plan group | AACN weight | Questions in this bank |
|---|---|---|
| Cardiovascular | 13% | 228 |
| Respiratory | 12% | 210 |
| Endocrine, Hematologic, GI, Renal and Integumentary | 21% | 367 |
| Musculoskeletal, Neurologic and Behavioral | 18% | 315 |
| Multisystem | 16% | 280 |
| Professional Caring and Ethical Practice | 20% | 350 |
The first five groups are the examination’s Clinical Judgment content; the sixth, Professional Caring and Ethical Practice, carries the professional competencies that complete the plan, and at a fifth of the scored examination it is the largest single group on the current plan. The combined groups deserve a word of honesty: AACN publishes weights at the six-group level only. It publishes no weights for the individual systems inside the combined groups, and this bank’s distribution inside those groups is a PassProfessor build allocation, not an AACN figure. Any source that presents inside-group percentages as AACN’s is presenting its own allocation as the certifying body’s — this page does not.
Cardiovascular (228 questions) and Respiratory (210 questions) are the classic center of adult critical care practice, and together they carry a quarter of the scored examination. Endocrine, Hematologic, GI, Renal and Integumentary (367 questions) is the bank’s largest Clinical Judgment group because it is the plan’s largest clinical group: five systems sharing one weight, which rewards breadth rather than depth in a single favorite system. Musculoskeletal, Neurologic and Behavioral (315 questions) joins body systems to behavioral and psychosocial care, a combination candidates under-practice when they study systems in isolation. Multisystem (280 questions) holds the presentations that cross system boundaries — including the adult obstetric critical care described above — where prioritization decides the question. Professional Caring and Ethical Practice (350 questions) covers the professional competencies of critical care nursing: advocacy and moral agency, caring practices, clinical inquiry, collaboration, facilitation of learning, response to diversity, and systems thinking. At its recorded weight, treating it as soft material to skim is a scoring error.
Passing, stated exactly
AACN publishes the CCRN (Adult) passing standard as a raw count: 83 correct of 125 scored items, effective November 12, 2025. The standard was set through a modified Angoff criterion-referenced process, it is scored on the total examination rather than group by group, and AACN expresses it as a raw count — it is not stated as a percentage, and this program does not convert it into one. If a source gives you a percentage for this standard, that source has done arithmetic AACN does not do, and its figure is not AACN’s standard.
The practical consequence is a preparation goal with no shortcut in it: strength across the whole plan, with margin. Because the standard applies to the total, a weak group cannot be quarantined — it draws on the same total as your strongest group. Within this program, 70 is a PRACTICE BENCHMARK ONLY: a readiness marker we set for practice performance, deliberately labeled wherever it appears. It is not AACN’s standard and it is not a conversion of AACN’s standard; it is a training target, and it should be read the way training targets are read — as evidence, in practice, that performance is consistently strong group by group.
How to use it
- Join the notify list today. Enrollment is not open yet, and the notify list is how you hear the moment it is. While you wait, read the CCRN exam guide — it walks the test plan group by group and lays out the eligibility routes and the scoring record in full.
- Survey all six groups first. Early practice should touch cardiovascular through professional practice alike, so your first group-by-group picture of yourself is honest rather than flattering.
- Read every explanation, including for questions you answered correctly. A right answer reached by a wrong reason is a wrong answer waiting for a differently worded presentation. The explanations are where the bank teaches; the questions are where it tests.
- Drill the group that costs you. Let your results, not your preferences, set the next block of study — the plan rewards the candidate with no thin group, and the combined groups punish narrow preparation.
- Finish with timed, mixed practice. Sit the timed practice form under real time pressure, review every explanation, and test when your practice is consistently strong across all six groups. In this program, 70 is a PRACTICE BENCHMARK ONLY: a readiness marker for your practice, never AACN’s passing standard.
Frequently asked questions
Is this program for the Adult CCRN only? Yes. This program prepares candidates for the CCRN (Adult) examination of the AACN Certification Corporation, and every scenario in the bank involves an adult patient. CCRN (Pediatric) and CCRN (Neonatal) are separate AACN examinations with their own test plans and standards; this program does not cover them. The one boundary case is adult obstetric critical care inside the Multisystem group — life-threatening complications in a critically ill pregnant adult — which is Adult examination content and is in scope.
How many practice questions does the program include, and how is the bank organized? 1,750 original practice questions, with an explanation for every question. The bank is organized in the test plan’s six groups: Cardiovascular 228, Respiratory 210, Endocrine, Hematologic, GI, Renal and Integumentary 367, Musculoskeletal, Neurologic and Behavioral 315, Multisystem 280, and Professional Caring and Ethical Practice 350 — so practice results can be read group by group and weak areas identified early.
Does the program include explanations? Yes — an explanation for every question, all 1,750 of them. The explanations teach the reasoning behind the keyed answer — what finding or principle decides it, and what separates it from the closest alternatives — so practice builds clinical judgment rather than familiarity with questions you have already seen.
How many questions are on the real examination, and how long is the sitting? The CCRN (Adult) examination administers 150 questions — 125 scored plus 25 pretest — in 3 hours, delivered through PSI at a testing center or by live remote proctoring. The questions are multiple-choice, single-best-answer items. Pretest questions do not count toward your result, and the sitting does not identify them.
What score do I need to pass? AACN publishes the standard as a raw count: 83 correct of 125 scored items, effective November 12, 2025, set by a modified Angoff process and scored on the total examination. AACN expresses that standard as a raw count, not as a percentage, and this program does not convert it. In this program, 70 is a PRACTICE BENCHMARK ONLY — a study target we set for readiness, not AACN’s standard.
Am I eligible to sit for the CCRN (Adult) examination? This program is built for the Direct Care pathway. That route requires a current, unencumbered U.S. RN or APRN license and direct-care experience with acutely and critically ill adult patients under one of two hour options: 1,750 hours in the last 2 years, with 875 of those hours in the most recent year; or 2,000 hours in the last 5 years, with 144 of those hours in the most recent year. The majority of the hours must be spent with critically ill patients. AACN’s own publications govern eligibility, so confirm your standing there before you apply. The companion guide sets the routes out in full.
What does the real examination cost? The verified initial examination fees are $260 for AACN members and $375 for nonmembers. Those are AACN’s fees for the examination itself, separate from this program’s price. The retired fee schedule sometimes quoted elsewhere is not the current one, and it does not appear on this page.
What does the program cost? $79. That is the decided PassProfessor price for this program, charged when you enroll after enrollment opens. It is the price of the practice program only — not AACN’s examination fee, which is stated separately above.
Are these the actual examination questions? No. Every question is original to PassProfessor, written from scratch to AACN’s published Adult test plan and current authoritative clinical sources. We never use actual examination items, recalled items, or another provider’s material, and no question in the bank asks you to recite a code, section, or citation number — clinical facts are tested, citations never are.
How is the practice organized, and does it match the real examination? The program is organized around a timed practice form of 125 questions in 180 minutes, plus six group drills — one for each test-plan group. That is our preparation design, chosen so its length and pace mirror a real sitting while drilling stays focused; we do not claim it matches how AACN or PSI administers the examination. The real examination’s recorded facts stand in the table above.
When will enrollment open? The bank is built — 1,750 questions with an explanation for every question — the launch package is complete, and the program is in final preparation as part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog. Join the notify list on this page and we will email you when enrollment opens. We are not publishing a date we cannot keep.
Disclaimer
PassProfessor is an independent exam-preparation provider; AACN does not endorse this program, and PassProfessor is not affiliated with or sponsored by the AACN Certification Corporation. CCRN is used on this page as a factual reference to AACN’s credential. This program is examination preparation only: it provides no certification, and it offers no clinical instruction or patient-care advice. The credential is awarded solely by the AACN Certification Corporation to candidates who meet its requirements. Examination details on this page are limited to the verified record described in the guide and are current as of November 2026; AACN’s official publications govern if anything here differs from them.