&gt; Is your wife re-certified every year or two? Does she have to have a certain number of continuing education hours every year?<p>Every time credentials come up with respect to this industry there are a whole bunch of people who complain that credentials are meaningless because people can just cheat or coast their way through.  They go so far as to include CS degrees themselves in that category.  What makes you think the education and credentials for nurses are so much better than for software engineers that nurses can be hired based on credentials and software engineers cannot?