Do you know what a stem is when it comes to test development? What about what we mean when we reference an “item”?
If these terms are familiar to you, you have probably been involved with some form of creating an exam like the VA-BC™.
If you are scratching your head, don’t worry—our volunteers can teach you.
From the yearly writing and reviewing of test questions, to board members, to the job analysis every 5 years, our volunteers keep the VA-BC™ up to industry standards and valuable to clinicians, patients, and the public.
Seeking: knowledgeable professionals
Mickey, an independent research consultant, is a long-time volunteer with VACC. She has served on the test committee, which reviews and edits exam questions or “items” to select which items make the final cut. Those on the test committee make sure all the items previously submitted by the item writing committee are rigorous and appropriately referenced.
Mickey also helped create the first installment of the VA-BC™ exam in 2010 and remembers the feeling of volunteering for the first time.
“In some ways it’s intimidating,” she said. “You don’t have to have a doctorate to do this, you don’t have to have a master’s, just a knowledge and expertise in your field, even if it’s just one aspect of it. Maybe you’re a neonatal nurse that has a VA-BC™—we need you! Maybe you specialize in home care or geriatrics—we need you too. You don’t have to know everything to be a volunteer.”
The test committee meets as a group four to six times over the course of a few months to conduct various exam development tasks, including:
- reviewing newly written items to ensure they are relevant to the current test outline and do not include a language or geography bias.
- reviewing the set of exam questions selected for a given test cycle to ensure there is no cueing (when one question signals the answer to another question).
- reviewing item performance after an exam cycle.
“Maybe you’re a neonatal nurse that has a VA-BC™—we need you! Maybe you specialize in home care or geriatrics—we need you too. You don’t have to know everything to be a volunteer.”
Being the topic experts
The item writing committee, on the other hand, tends to have more individual work than other roles, as they go through training on writing sound questions and each submit a certain number of items later.
“It’s all learning. I learn every time I look at test questions,” Mickey said.
Rosalena, a registered nurse, is on the test committee with Mickey this year. Though she has never been to an in-person volunteer retreat like Mickey, she appreciates the opportunity to meet other VA-BC™s on the committee.
“I think it’s fantastic to have a variety of people,” Rosalena said. “I’ve never placed an intraosseous device myself, but a pediatric nurse that was on [a call] the other day said, ‘I do them every day’ and I said, ‘you can be the expert on that.’”
This sharing of information and learning from one another is Mickey’s favorite part about volunteering.
“You have to continually expose yourself to new information within your specialty because you don’t know how that might apply. You might find something in the neonatal world that applies to the 99-year-old whose veins are just as fragile. It’s fun! Who wants to approach a job and feel like you know everything?” Mickey said.
“Things don’t just happen by magic; it takes people.”
Rosalena first earned her VA-BC™ in 2015, but she volunteered for the first time in 2021. She said she decided to volunteer to make a difference in her certification. “You do get CEUs but even without that it’s a great thing,” she said. “I really enjoy being involved because it helps to give [certificants] a voice.”
Mickey agreed. “Knowing how much work that first exam took, I want to make sure that this generation of clinicians appreciate that without their help, it’s not going to always be there,” she said. “If they sit for the exam and they think ‘this question should be on there’ or ‘that question shouldn’t be on there’: well, then get in there!”
“Things don’t just happen by magic,” she added. “It takes people.”
Editor’s note: Full names of volunteers have been redacted for test security.
