INNOVATIONS IN ACCREDITATION
Accreditation of Post Master’s Certificate Programs and Candidacy Status

In July the NLNAC Board of Commissioners approved two new innovative activities for NLNAC:  Accreditation for Post Master’s Certificate tracks of graduate nursing programs, and Candidacy Status for programs working toward Initial Accreditation.    

Post Master’s Certificate Accreditation
In response to the increasing call for verification of the quality and rigor of all graduate nursing education, especially advanced practice tracks, NLNAC will, starting with the Spring 2006 Accreditation Cycle offer accreditation to Post-Master’s Certificate tracks of graduate nursing programs that hold or are seeking accreditation. 

This innovation has been designed to provide those Master’s programs offering post graduate nursing education a proven means of verifying their excellence.  This new practice will also address the needs of certifying bodies and state boards of nursing and other regulatory bodies who are increasingly looking for and/or requiring that applicants for advanced certification or advanced practice licenses have completed an accredited course of study.

Candidacy Status
The establishment of Candidacy status is also a response to the increasing need on the part of nursing programs of all types to demonstrate their rigor almost as soon as they "open their doors to their first students".

Programs will be granted Candidacy Status after NLNAC approval of submitted information addressing the faculty, the curriculum, and the program resources.  Further, programs granted Candidacy must be reviewed for full accreditation with two years or four accreditation cycles.

Once granted Candidacy, programs will be able to formally announce their status to the public at large, their students and potential students, and regulatory bodies to whom they are accountable, including their state board of nursing.  NLNAC will announce the names of nursing programs with Candidacy on our website.

 

These two new NLNAC activities facilitate the achievement of our mission, purposes, and goals as they are designed to assure quality and rigor within nursing education and in so doing nursing practice.

(for more information and applications for Candidacy Status or Accreditation for a Post Master’s Certificate program of study see the NLNAC website and Accreditation Manual, 2005 edition)