About · NPS prep
About Small Airways
Small Airways is an independent study site for NBRC's neonatal/pediatric specialty exam, and the free web side of an NPS question bank published as an iOS app. It is not run by NBRC, and nothing on it comes from a real exam form.
Who
What the site is
Small Airways covers one exam: the Neonatal/Pediatric Respiratory Care Specialty Examination (NPS). The site and the app share one bank of 1,055 practice questions on the NPS content areas. A slice of that bank is free here: 60 rows on the NPS practice test, 12 on each section guide and 8 on the home page. The full bank lives in the app.
The pages walk the exam one part at a time: Section I (shared critical and general care) and Section II (critical care only), area by area, with what each area weighs and where people slip. Clinical points stay at textbook level. You will not find drug doses or ventilator settings written as orders here; those belong to your unit's protocols and the prescriber.
Rows
How a practice row gets onto the site
Drawn from the app's bank
Every row starts as one of the 1,055 app questions. These are practice items written for the app; they are not real exam questions, and NBRC's own items are never published.
Solved blind, then key-checked
Before a row goes live, it is answered without looking at the bank's key. It goes on the site only when that answer matches the key. A row where the two disagree stays off.
Tagged to the outline
Each row is tagged with the outline area it tests (I-A to I-M in Section I, II-A to II-F in Section II) and a patient type, both shown in the row header, so you can sort your misses by area.
Shipped with its rationale
The explanation opens under the row after you answer and says why the keyed option is the best of the four. If it clashes with your textbook, trust the textbook and report the row.
Facts
Where the exam facts come from
Every number about the exam is taken from an NBRC document and printed with a link to it. Numbers that change, such as fees, carry the month they were checked: currently October 2026. Format facts follow the Detailed Content Outline effective October 1, 2025.
| What you read here | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Item count, time, the two sections and their weights | NPS Detailed Content Outline, effective October 1, 2025 |
| Eligibility, delivery at PSI, scoring, results, retakes, fees | NBRC Candidate Handbook, September 2026 edition |
| The end of the CRT route | NBRC notice on the NPS admissions change |
| Credential term and maintenance | NBRC answers on the CMP |
There is no passing percentage here, because NBRC compares your raw score with a cut score it does not print as a number on its NPS page. Pass rates are not printed here either. A passing percentage you see quoted elsewhere is somebody's estimate.
Indep
Independent of NBRC
Small Airways is not affiliated with the National Board for Respiratory Care. NBRC does not write, review or see anything on this site, and NBRC does not endorse any review program. The names NBRC, NPS and RRT-NPS appear only because they are the names of the exam and the credential.
If a page here ever disagrees with NBRC, NBRC is right. For your application, test date or score, go to the NPS page on nbrc.org. To flag a row you think is keyed wrong, see how to contact Small Airways.
Check the rows yourself
Sixty free rows on the practice test, each tagged with its outline area; the app holds the full 1,055-question bank.