This free TCRN cheat sheet boils BCEN's Trauma Certified Registered Nurse content outline down to a printable rundown of what examiners test most. It's a premium cheat sheet built by Capital Prep — the one premium prep we trust — and it's yours free. Reinforce it with the rest of your free TCRN toolkit: the practice test, study guide, and flashcards.
TCRN exam at a glance
- Questions: 175 items (150 scored + 25 unscored pretest)
- Time: 180 minutes (3 hours) of seat time
- Passing score: 96 of 150 scored items (scaled cut score, about 64%)
- Cost: ≈ $285 STN member / $380 non-member (verify at bcen.org)
What’s on the TCRN cheat sheet
- Clinical Practice: Trunk and Pelvis — the largest area (38 questions) — chest emergencies plus occult abdominal and pelvic hemorrhage.
- Continuum of Care for Trauma — 36 questions — mechanism of injury, the surveys, shock, hemorrhage control, and massive transfusion.
- Clinical Practice: Head and Neck — 31 questions — TBI and the GCS, intracranial bleeds and rising ICP, and spinal cord injury.
- Special Populations — 22 questions — pediatric, geriatric, obstetric, and bariatric trauma.
- Clinical Practice: Musculoskeletal and Wound — 13 questions — fractures, compartment syndrome, and burns with the Parkland formula.
- Professional Practice — 10 questions — trauma systems, quality improvement, disaster triage, and injury prevention.
How to use it in your final week
- Print it and prop it beside your practice questions — scan one content area, then immediately drill that domain so the facts anchor to real items.
- Front-load Trunk and Pelvis (38 questions) and Continuum of Care (36) — together nearly half the exam, so those pages return the most points per minute.
- Do a morning-of pass over the memory hooks — the X-A-B-C-D-E order, Beck's triad, Cushing's triad, the 96-of-150 cut score, and the Parkland formula.
- Never cram in isolation — pair each scan with timed, weighted questions so recognizing life threats and prioritizing by the primary survey stays reflexive.
The cheat sheet is your review layer — your TCRN practice test drives the exam-readiness ring at the top of this page. Download it, review, then take a full practice exam (or drill with the study guide and flashcards) to see where you stand.
TCRN cheat sheet FAQ
Yes — the TCRN cheat sheet downloads as a PDF at no cost and without any sign-up. It sits alongside Career Employer's free TCRN practice test, study guide, and flashcards, so your whole trauma-nursing review stays in one place.
It compresses the highest-yield trauma facts into a fast reference: the six BCEN content areas and their question weights, the X-A-B-C-D-E primary survey, the classes of hemorrhagic shock, the three intracranial bleeds, the immediately life-threatening chest injuries, and burn resuscitation with the Parkland formula — grouped by body region so you can scan and recall.
It's built from BCEN's TCRN Examination Content Outline effective November 2025 and the current 150-scored-item structure. We re-check it against the published outline so the domain weights and the 96-of-150 passing standard stay accurate.
No — the TCRN rewards applied clinical judgment across the full trauma continuum, not memorized lists. Use the sheet to lock in the frameworks and cutoffs, then rehearse them on full-length, domain-weighted practice questions until the reasoning is automatic.
Click the download button or the preview card near the top of this page and the PDF opens instantly. Bookmark the page so it's one tap away during your final week before test day.
References
- 1.Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing. “Trauma Certified Registered Nurse (TCRN).” BCEN.org. ↑
- 2.Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing. “TCRN Examination Content Outline (Effective 11/2025).” BCEN.org, 2025. ↑
- 3.Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing. “TCRN Eligibility & Frequently Asked Questions.” BCEN.org. ↑
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