Evaluation of advanced cardiac life support written examinations

Abstract

To examine the quality of 2 advanced cardiac life support written examinations and the relationship between demographic variables and test performance. Descriptive. Advanced cardiac life support courses held at 4 midwestern hospitals, one outpatient surgery center, and one community college. Nonprobability sample of 367 participants. Two versions of the American Heart Association advanced cardiac life support written examinations. Reliability coefficients of test A and test B were 0.45 and 0.54, respectively. Discrimination and difficulty indices calculated on both tests revealed that test B questions were more difficult, with better discriminators. Prior experience, sex of participant, and profession were identified as factors influencing test performance. Although test B surpassed the performance of test A, both examinations were problematic. Additional investigation and refinement of the advanced cardiac life support tests are warranted.