November 3, 2006

C.C. Halloran, MD
Editor
EM Resident

Re: Abbreviated Version of Challenger Position Statement on the EMRA Boards Review Course Survey

Dear Dr. Halloran:

In the August/September issue of your newsletter, a report authored by Drs. Landman, Devore and Gardner was published. The report claims to be a broad survey of user experience with and attitudes towards various boards review media and courses. Among other venues reviewed, the report listed “Med-Challenger”. The report, although sincerely motivated and intended to be an informal summary, conveys an unfortunate and unwarranted impression of formality in its review of our program and, perhaps due to its severe methodological shortcomings, to other programs and courses as well. The EMRA report:

1. in many instances reflects the views of an unrepresentative sample of the resident population and does not include a sufficient number of respondents to yield a finding with reliable power or predictability; for example, only 29 out of over 300 respondents to a survey sent to more than 3000 readers claim to have ever used “Med-Challenger”
2. fails to insure that its respondents are commenting at any given time on the same product(s), same versions or the same venues
3. fails to allow for serious confounds in the findings: a critical example of this deficiency is that most of the other boards review seminars and media employ some or all of the Challenger content in their own instructional material or otherwise rely on Challenger to support their training methodology
4. fails to employ a reliable survey format so as to prevent outlier opinions from biasing survey results, particularly with small sample pools.
5. fails to consistently assign the reviewed media or courses to the proper categories.

Challenger Corporation provides a peer-reviewed course catalogue which is not biased by the support of commercial interests and whose content selection, editing and presentation is under the supervision of a nationally recognized Physician Advisory Board. Eighteen US emergency medicine, as well as twenty-five family medicine, residency programs employ the Challenger content and tracking system to train, evaluate and remediate residents in training. The company extends an offer to EMRA or its authors to support a truly scientific survey of these review media and to share our own findings based on the experience of over 1500 residents, not one of whom has ever failed the initial boards exam after using Challenger materials to prepare. A full version of this response is accessible at http://www.chall.com/press_cppbrc.htm.

Sincerely,

Dan Jones, MD
Founder and Director, Clinical CME
4052-A East Van Buren
Eureka Springs, AR 72632