Longitudinal assessment: A strategy to improve continuing professional certification.

Healthcare certification organizations carefully balance a commitment to bring value to their membership through programs that support lifelong learning and professional growth, while protecting the public by ensuring competent certified practitioners. These certifying bodies are challenged with remaining current with their maintenance of certification programs while keeping pace with the growing breadth of knowledge, industry standards and guidelines, innovative advances, and rapid technological gains in testing and assessment. Within the context of process innovation, the National Board of Certification and Recertification for Nurse Anesthetists (NBCRNA) evaluated the current landscape of Longitudinal Assessment (LA) as a potential strategy for the assessment of core knowledge as part of their Continued Professional Certification Program for Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists.