Objective To understand the re-certification needs of palliative care nurse specialist,and to provide reference for the establishment of a re-certification system suitable for the national conditions of China. Methods From November to December 2023,purposive sampling was used to conduct semi-structured interview with 13 pallia-tive care nurse specialist,training and management personnel,and palliative care physician in 6 provinces and cities,in-cluding Beijing,Hunan,Yunnan,Henan,Shandong,and Jiangsu. The 7-step analysis method of Colaizzi was used to summarize the theme. Results Three themes and 10 sub-themes were formed,including the significance and exist-ing difficulties of re-certification,the infrastructure of re-certification (review institutions and cycles,performance of nurse specialist),and the content of re-certification evaluation ( professional knowledge,social practice,continuing ed-ucation,nursing management,scientific research and teaching,satisfaction ). Conclusion The Chinese Nursing As-sociation should formulate a unified training outline,and the certification authority should complete the re-certification assessment. The re-certification cycle was 5 years,and the assessment content should be refined.