| Statement of the Problem: Curricula in most physician assistant (PA) training programs include a greater amount of information than there is time to deliver it. This is due to the nature of medicine with its ever expanding breadth and depth of knowledge. The national board examination for physician assistants covers a selected range of topics in which programs must assure students are competent. The enormous scope of medical subject matter presents a challenge to PA programs in avoiding the tempation to "teach to the test." Curricular emphasis needs to be on developing skilled clinicians who possess not only the needed fund of basic medical knowledge, but also the necessary cognitive and communication skills to be effective and ethical healthcare providers. Administering valid assessments is particularly challening in today's medical training environment. One potential solution is the use of online medical question banks (such as Exam Master Online). These systems include questions written by subject matter experts that are aligned with the national certifying examination. As such, an online medical question bank may not only address the curricular need, but might also improve student scores on the PACKRAT (Physician Assistant Clinical Knowledge Rating and Assessment Tool) and the PANCE (Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination). This study explores the theoretical frameworks of assessment and instructional alignment.
Participants in this study will be students attending Physician Assistant programs that use Exam Master Online (EMO). At this time, two schools have agreed to participate: Idaho State University and Medical University of South Carolina. All students in these two programs will participate by taking exams administered through EMO. Student records will be deidentified before they are submitted to the study. Only aggregate data will be reported. The student data comes from examinations that have previously been administered as a normal component of the curriculum.
Background: The research question to be explored in this study is to determine whether the use of Exam Master is correlated with: a) student exam scores on the PACKRAT; and, b) student exam scores on the PANCE.
The PACKRAT is a preliminary test used to assess how well a PA student will score on the National Board Exam. The National Board Exam is a manditory test which all PA students must pass before they are permitted to practice as a physician assistant. Preparing students to succeed in these exams it critical. There are many resources available to help prepare students to take these exams, one of which is an online testing system known as Exam Master Online.
Exam Master is an online question bank which helps to prepare students to take these tests. It provides students with numerous practice exams which simulate the National Board Exam in content and question construction. It allows students to take multiple exams and review their results. It is an exceptional training tool which may be correlated to higher exam scores on both the PACKRAT and the PANCE.
Preliminary data compiled by the ISU and Medical University of South Carolina Physician Assistant programs indicates that the use of Exam Master improves student exam scores on the PAKRAT exam. In May of 2009, 47 ISU PA students took the PACKRAT exam. Thirty-three of the 47 students scored above the national average, a feat that has never been accomplished by ISU's PA program.
There is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that Exam Master improves student scores on the PACKRAT and possibly on the PANCE, because PACKRAT scores are highly predictive of student's scores on the PANCE. Therefore, it is the goal of this project, to assess this hypothesis by using data collected by other universities who also use Exam Master.
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