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A Closer Look at Physician Assistants' Performance on the NCCPA Recertification Examinations

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate how physician assistants (PAs) in major focused areas of practice perform on each of the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) recertification examinations. In addition, the relationship between certification—the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination (PANCE) and recertification—the Physician Assistant National Recertifying Examination (PANRE) and Pathway II—scores was assessed. Design: The sample consisted of the scores of 3,402 PAs who took PANRE between 2000‐2001 and 1,206 who took Pathway II between 1999‐2001. Initial PANCE scores were also obtained for each member of the sample. Examinees' focused areas of practice included general/family practice (53%), surgical (25%), emergency medicine (11%), internal medicine (8%), and pediatrics (3%). Results: Results indicated consistency in both PANRE and Pathway II performance across different practice areas, even after controlling for length of time examinees had spent in their declared practice area. Results also showed no statistically significant correlation between the average amount of time spent seeing patients with a particular organ system condition and the number of questions answered correctly in that organ system of the recertification exam. Finally, PANCE scores significantly correlated with PANRE scores (r2=.31) and to a lesser extent with Pathway II scores (r2=.07) for both general/family practice and surgical PA populations. Conclusions: PAs across different major practice‐focus areas of medicine perform similarly on the recertification examinations, regardless of how long they have spent in their practice area. PAs who on average spend more time seeing patients with a specific organ system condition do not do better in that area of the recertification exam. Additionally, PAs who had higher scores on PANCE also tended to have higher scores on the recertification exams, notably PANRE. The findings of this study are consistent with the training and practice model adopted by NCCPA to describe the philosophy behind the PA recertification examinations.