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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1528856
This article is part of the Research Topic The Role of Nursing in Public Health Promotion and Education View all 27 articles

Perceived Value and Barriers of Nursing Specialty Certifications among Clinical Nurses in Saudi Arabia: A Cross-sectional Study

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 King Saud University Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 2 King Saud University, Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Specialty nursing certifications reflect nurse's knowledge and competence in certain areas.Obtaining certification allows them to advance their careers and enhance patient care standards as their role and scope of responsibility expands. This study aimed to understand how nurses view specialty certification and related challenges in three university hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.A cross-sectional, correlational design was used. A survey questionnaire (Perceived Value of Certification-12 Tool) was sent through email, and it had one question for each barrier. The majority of participants valued certification to verify specialist knowledge (93.9%), enhance achievement (82.8%), and increase competence (79.1%). Certification was associated extrinsically with hiring preference (54.7%), recognition from colleagues (52.3%), and professional autonomy (51.7%). The primary barriers were lack of institutional reward (72.7%) and examination cost (64.8%), with not passing earlier being the least mentioned barrier (2%). The biggest obstacles faced by clinical nurses in obtaining certification include limited institutional rewards because their organization did offer incentives, such as promotions or salary bumps. Age and hospital significantly predicted clinical nurses' intrinsic value of certification, while age, gender, nationality, and hospital significantly predicted their extrinsic value. Age and gender significantly influenced their overall perceived value of certification. Recommended measures include implementing tailored support initiatives and financial aid programs to address these barriers. Future studies should adopt longitudinal and qualitative designs to evaluate the impact of focused strategies. Overall, nurses in Riyadh recognize the value of certification. However, focused interventions must be implemented to overcome identified challenges and amplify the professional benefits of certification. A collaborative approach should be developed to provide support and actively promote the pursuit of nursing certification.

    Keywords: barriers of certification, clinical nursesnurse clinicians, Nurse specialists, nursing specialty certification, Saudi Arabia, Value of certification

    Received: 15 Nov 2024; Accepted: 07 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Alsadah, Aboshaiqah and Alanazi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Naif Hamdi Alanazi, King Saud University, Riyadh, 11451, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.