NE-BC study guide, planned by the 2025 weights

Of 125 scored items:

• Health Care Delivery: 35%, the largest share. Our pages split it into ethics and regulation and care delivery.
• Human Resource Management: 32%.
• Quality and Safety: 17%.
• Business Management: 16%, the smallest, and the one with arithmetic.

The two small domains together are worth about as much as human resources alone.

The October 15, 2025 outline moved staffing into Business Management and leadership styles into Human Resource Management, cut Quality and Safety to 17%, and added cultural humility (DEIB), Stark and anti-kickback law, EMTALA, social determinants of health and virtual nursing. The reference list now cites the 2025 ANA Code of Ethics (10 provisions) and Nursing Leadership: Scope and Standards of Practice, 3rd edition (2024).

If your book or course predates the change, three things in it are now wrong: staffing questions sit under business management, leadership-style questions under human resources, and the ethics code has a tenth provision. A domain list with staffing under human resources is the quickest tell of 2021-era material.

The ANA's Nurse Executive Review and Resource Manual (3rd edition) is the review book ANCC sells on its exam page (ANCC exam page). The twelve titles on the reference list do not include it, though that list is what ANCC uses to build the exam; ANCC also states that using any course or material neither implies eligibility nor guarantees a pass.

Use it as an outline-shaped review, then check its domain placement against the October 2025 outline: anything that files staffing under human resources, or counts nine provisions in the Code, is older than the exam. The manual is sold as a paperback through the ANA; we do not link copies posted elsewhere.

ANCC lists twelve texts for the current exam (reference list, effective Oct 15, 2025). Sorted by where they pay off:

• Ethics and standards: the ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses (2025), Nursing Leadership: Scope and Standards of Practice (3rd ed., 2024) and Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice (4th ed., 2021).
• Law and compliance: Legal and Ethical Issues for Health Professions (5th ed., 2023).
• Money: Penner's Economics and Financial Management for Nurses and Nurse Leaders (4th ed., 2023).
• Disaster readiness: Preparing Nurses for Disaster Management (2023).
• Research and evidence: Polit & Beck's Nursing Research (12th ed., 2024).
• Leadership and management texts: Huber and Joseph; Huston; Roussel, Thomas and Harris; Yoder-Wise and Sportsman; Cherry and Jacob.

If you read only three, take the Code, the leadership scope and standards, and Penner: they map to the topics this site's domain pages treat in most depth.

1. Week 1, a starting score. Do the practice test before opening a book, and record your score per domain.
2. Weeks 2–3, human resources. Employment law first (FMLA vs ADA and the rest), then performance, retention and team conflict.
3. Weeks 4–5, health care delivery. The Code and regulation (ethics and regulation), then indicators, person-centered care and disaster roles (care delivery).
4. Week 6, business. Formulas until they are automatic (business management).
5. Week 7, quality and safety. Unit-level improvement and safety culture (quality and safety).
6. Week 8, mixed review. Redo every missed item, then repeat the practice set against the clock.

Short on time? Keep the proportions and shrink each block; dropping a domain costs more than skimming it.

• Hours per patient day: nursing hours ÷ patient days.
• FTE: one full-time equivalent is 2,080 paid hours a year (40 × 52). Convert needed hours to FTEs before talking about head count.
• Variance: budgeted minus actual, then the question of whether volume explains it.
• Ratios that recur: productivity, skill mix, occupancy, operating margin, cost per patient day.

Worked examples and the usual errors: business management.