Family Nurse Practitioner Certificate

The Post Master’s Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) certificate allows master’s and doctorally prepared nurses to attain an FNP license in the State of California after completing 31 units of post-graduate work. Completion of the certificate verifies to the California Board of Registered Nursing that the students satisfy all requirements for licensure as family nurse practitioners. The program also provides documentation to professional organizations that all requirements for national certification examinations were completed. The certificate program includes the courses listed below. Sequencing is determined in consultation with an advisor.

Post Master’s Family Nurse Practitioner Certificate — 31 units

NURS 708Diagnosis and Management in Primary Care4
NURS 711Advanced Physical Assessment Across the Life Span3
NURS 715Pharmacological Principles Across the Life Span3
NURS 716Advanced Pathophysiology and Diagnostic Reasoning I3
NURS 717Advanced Pathophysiology and Diagnostic Reasoning II3
NURS 804Professional Issues and Nurse Practitioner Skills3
NURS 810Family Nursing Practitioner Practicum I4
NURS 811Family Nursing Practitioner Practicum II4
NURS 812Family Nursing Practitioner Practicum III4

Students completing the Post-Master’s FNP certificate program will achieve the School of Nursing’s MSN Expected Student Learning Outcomes as outlined below:

  • Applies and integrates broad organizational, client-centered, and culturally appropriate concepts in the planning, delivery, management, and evaluation of evidence-based clinical prevention and population care and services.
  • Demonstrates nursing and inter-professional collaboration that facilitates open communication, mutual respect, and shared decision-making to achieve quality patient care.
  • Creates collaborative programs and educational approaches that address health promotion and disease prevention needs of culturally-ethnically diverse individuals and populations.
  • Demonstrates a professional leadership role to promote quality and safe clinical patient care that incorporates ethical and critical decision-making approaches, fiscal accountability, effective working relationships, and systems perspectives.
  • Assimilates nursing knowledge and expertise through research utilization, informatics literacy, and generates educational, leadership, or clinical approaches to advance professional nursing practice.
  • Utilizes information technology to communicate effectively, manage knowledge, mitigate error, and to support decision-making.
  • Designs evaluation strategies for nursing care outcomes to assess, manage, and determine resource allocation for evaluation of nursing care outcomes.
  • Evaluate methods, tools, performance measures, and standards related to quality improvement within a healthcare organization.
  • Applies research outcomes within the practice setting to resolve identified practice problems.
  • Organizes interventions at the health care system level utilizing policy development processes, economic principles, and employing advocacy strategies to influence health and health care services for individuals

Admission/Application Information for the FNP Certificate Program

Admission Requirements

  • Master’s or doctoral degree in nursing.
  • Current RN licensure in California.
  • One year or 2,000 hours of recent relevant clinical nursing experience.