Medical-surgical nursing has two competing certifications, awarded by different boards, aimed at the same nurse. Both are legitimate and accredited, and neither confers anything the other does not.
CMSRN
From the Medical-Surgical Nursing Certification Board.
Eligibility: an unencumbered and current registered nurse licence in the United States, its territories, or Canada, and 2,000 practice hours in a medical-surgical setting within the past three years. Two full years of medical-surgical experience is recommended rather than strictly required.
International applicants have their credentials evaluated for equivalency and need 1,000 hours of medical-surgical practice within three years.
The examination content is revalidated through a job analysis every five years.
MEDSURG-BC
From the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
Eligibility: a current active registered nurse licence, two years of full-time practice as a registered nurse, at least 2,000 hours of clinical practice in medical-surgical nursing within the last three years, and 30 hours of continuing education in the specialty within the same period.
Term: five years. The examination is 150 questions, of which 125 are scored, over three hours.
Choosing between them
The requirements are nearly identical; the differences are administrative.
The ANCC credential requires 30 hours of specialty continuing education up front and carries the renewal structure common to all its certifications. The CMSRN comes from a board dedicated to this specialty alone and is the one more often referenced within the medical-surgical nursing community.
In practice, check three things: which one your employer recognizes for a differential or reimbursement, which one colleagues on your unit hold, and which renewal structure suits how you accumulate continuing education. Employers that pay for one generally do not care which.
Why certifying here matters more than elsewhere
Medical-surgical nursing is the largest specialty in the country and the one the profession has most persistently treated as a default rather than a discipline. A body of knowledge that can be examined is the standard evidence that a field is a specialty, which makes certification here an argument as well as a credential.
It is also practical. The specialty has among the highest turnover in the hospital, and units that fund certification and build it into a clinical ladder retain people measurably better. See medical-surgical nursing, nurse turnover and retention, and clinical ladders.
Related
Sources
- CMSRN Certification — Medical-Surgical Nursing Certification Board, on eligibility and examination revalidation. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Medical-Surgical Nursing Certification — American Nurses Credentialing Center, on the MEDSURG-BC credential, eligibility, five-year term, and examination format. Accessed September 9, 2026.