Why CCI Partners with NASC on the CRNFA Credential

by James Stobinski

In December 2018 the Competency and Credentialing Institute made the decision to sell the CRNFA credential to the National Assistant at Surgery Certification. That sale ended the CCI ownership of the credential which had been in place for over two decades. This sale engendered a response from the CRNFA community and some other stakeholders and considerable comment from these communities. While CCI no longer owns the credential, we do continue a relationship with NASC and continue to support the CRNFA community.

Nurses who hold the CNOR credential and then subsequently pass the CRNFA certification examination are granted a dual credential as has been the case for many years. There is no additional charge to these CRNFA credential holders who then need only to fulfill the CRNFA recertification requirements to  maintain both credentials. Continued CNOR certification status allows these nurses to access the CCI Learning Management System (LMS), the LearnUpon system, to facilitate their continuous professional development. These CRNFA certificants will continue to have this privilege for the duration of their certification with NASC.

I am often asked why CCI continues such a close relationship with NASC even though we no longer have ownership of the credential. Simply put, we see this relationship as the right thing to do for the CRNFA community and one thing that we can do for the overall good of the larger perioperative nursing community. CCI has a long history of supporting a diversity of career roles in the perioperative setting and this partnership continues that tradition. As an organization CCI can do more in partnership with NASC than it could do alone in serving the many career paths found in the current surgical services setting.

There is strength in partnerships with groups such as NASC and the sale of the credential brought new resources and a fresh perspective to the administration of the credential. As successive recertification cycles play out the relationship with NASC will strengthen and the role of CCI will become more distant. This natural evolution allows the CRNFA credential to continue but allows CCI to focus their resources on developing new credentials to meet the evolving needs of the perioperative nursing community. In our effort to serve all the CRNFA stakeholders our ongoing close relationship with NASC allows both organizations to focus on their strengths.

NASC has a clear focus on the specialized work of surgical assisting enabling them to offer multiple credentials to nurses in this role. CCI can devote more resources to developing larger credentials for roles such as ambulatory surgery. We, CCI and NASC, can do more together than either group could do alone. We believe this synergy serves the community well and we look forward to a continued productive partnership with the able leadership of NASC. We are proud to continue our relationship with CRNFAs but we can now serve an even larger segment of the perioperative nursing community.

James Stobinski, PhD, RN, CNOR, CSSM(E) is the CEO of the Competency and Credentialing Institute.