March 30, 2007

Trevecca Nazarene University's PA Training Program is located in Nashville, TN. The Program Director is Michael Moredock, MD and the Director of Clinical Education is Larry Gerdom, MD. The program currently has 33 enrolled students in their clinical year and purchased the CPPAT™ installation in the summer of 2005.

As part of the preparation for their last site visit by the ARC-PA, the faculty at Trevecca reviewed first time pass rates on the PANCE for students in the PA program. They were concerned that their first time certification pass rates had been dropping.

Trevecca found a strong correlation between the GPA at the end of the student's didactic year and their first time pass rates on the certification exam. For students with a GPA of less than 2.90 there was only a 33% pass rate as compared to a 90% rate for students above that level.

For the Class of 2005, Med-Challenger FM was made available to students in their clinical year, but the use of the product was not mandatory. The first time pass rate on the PANCE for these students was 83%.

For the class of 2006, the faculty at Trevecca identified 12 students with a GPA under 2.90, the group with a likelihood of only 33% to successfully pass the PANCE exam during their first attempt. These students were notified of their standing in the department in August of 2005.

Dr. Gerdom was made the Director of Clinical Education in August of 2005. He conceived of the idea to modify Trevecca's clinical rotation syllabi to include a requirement that each student in their clinical year complete thirty-four Med-Challenger hours for each rotation. Challenger created a customized "Productivity Report" for Dr. Gerdom to use to track his students' progress through the material and make sure that the students were complying with his directives. A weighted average based on the number of hours in each section was used to calculate a final grade for each rotation. This grade became 25% of the student's final grade for the rotation. Furthermore, after rotations three and six, these grades were sent to the records office as semester grades for each set of rotations. Any student without 102 hours completed for the semester (3 rotations x 34 hours) received a grade of Incomplete. Using this system, all students were required to complete all 270 hours in the Med-Challenger course in order to graduate from the program.

Trevecca also took other measures to try and improve their first time PANCE pass rate. They re-instituted a comprehensive exam for their students and required any student not passing this exam to complete a certification review course before taking the certification exam. Most of Trevecca's students had taken such courses in the past before taking the certification exam, but this made it a requirement for lower performing students.

The first time pass rate for the Trevecca Class of 2006 was 97% with only one student out of 33 students not passing. Test scores on average for the class were higher than in past years. Since Trevecca anticipated that as many as twelve students would not pass the exam based upon their GPA at the end of their didactic year, the faculty were elated with this pass rate.

For the Class of 2007, Dr. Gerdom wanted to continue to incentivize his students to complete the Challenger material, which he and the other faculty members believe played a large part in their students' increased first time pass rate on the PANCE exam. In order to encourage the full completion of the Challenger curriculum, he added to the rotation syllabi that the Med-Challenger rotation grade would take into account the number of hours completed by the student. So, if a student only completed thirty hours, for example, instead of thirty-four, their grade would be adversely affected. The majority of students from the class of 2007 are on track to complete their Med-Challenger assignments and they are scoring with a weighted average of 98% on these materials.


Becca Metzger
Assistant Vice President
Director of Business Development
Challenger Corporation
5100 Poplar Avenue, Ste. 1410
Memphis, Tennessee 38137
Tel: (901) 762-8449
E-mail: becca.metzger@chall.com
www.chall.com