Using a Student Test Review Committee in a Physician Assistant Program

While administering a typical 100-question physician assistant (PA) examination, the instructor noticed that several students seemed frustrated. He had told the class prior to the test not to ask questions during the examination. He didn't want to be partial to students who asked questions and didn't want questions to disrupt other students. Later, after returning the exam to the students, he experienced the usual complaints about the wording of a particular question or issues regarding particular interpretation problems between specific parts of the textbook, lectures, or the exam. The perpetual question emerged in the instructors mind, how could he handle these wording and interpretation problems more efficiently? In response to these questions, two PA programs have developed a system of student review of exam questions and answers that have worked quite well. This article describes how this system works and how it could work for other programs.