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Everyone likes to complain about the National Registry exams.  Sure, there’s probably some truth to the adage that the only thing they measure is how well you take NR exams–but having met some of the people who passed them (barely, and after several tries), I’m very afraid of the people who can’t.

However, analyses of those exams can be fairly interesting.  I recently read an abstract of such an analysis (sorry, no direct link available, but if you can find this you can read it) comparing results from the FISDAP practice exam (formerly known as OSPE) to NR pass rates.  The OSPE questions were categorized as “critical thinking” or ” knowledge” in nature.  It turns out that people who did well on the critical thinking questions tended to pass the NR exam, while a person’s ability to answer the knowledge questions didn’t really make a difference.  To me, this suggests that the NR exam tests critical thinking skills more heavily than memorization ones.

This is actually a good thing, and makes me very happy.  After all, with the advent of portable brains (they’ve been around for years, only now they aren’t on paper), anyone can look up a fact if need be–but a good drug reference won’t do your thinking for you.  In the field, it’s far more critical that a medic can put together a diagnosis and treatment plan than it is to be able to remember that pheochromocytoma is a contraindication for lidocaine; it’s absolutely wonderful that the main exam for medics*, imperfect as it may be, is at least trying to test for the one that matters.

* in most states

Filed under: EMS Education, EMS Research