Competency and Credentialing Institute (CCI)
The Patient: CCI
The Competency and Credentialing Institute (CCI) is the industry leader in competency credentialing, assessment and education for healthcare practitioners working in surgical environments, with an emphasis on nurses. The organization strives to promote patient safety and help nurses provide a higher quality of care through assessment and credentialing.
Symptoms: The Challenge
While CCI offers a wide variety of certification and credentialing programs for a wide variety of perioperative nursing roles, in 2005 the organization started hearing requests from candidates for a certification program targeted at nurses in a management role. Specificially, customers were requesting a program or earned credential that would help operating room nurses make the transition to a manager-level position.
The demand for a certification that would focus on the development of managerial skills required CCI to conduct an analysis to determine the level of demand, and also whether there was enough knowledge to warrant a separate and unique certification program. After a thorough job task analysis, CCI made the determination that there was enough unique information to support a focused certification, there was not wide enough interest to support a full-blown program
CCI needed to balance its desire to provide its candidates with a means of assessing competence while ensuring that they didn't allocate a disproportionate amount of time and money developing a credentialing program that would service a small minority of its population.
As CCI expanded its mission, there was also an increased need to embrace a wider definition of competency credentialing. A curriculum-based certificate program had the potential to meet the needs of a broader audience than a traditional certification and meet both assessment and educational needs. It also allowed CCI to incorporate a "blended" approach to its certifications and assessments, which included delivering pre- and post-tests online and having actual printed training/learning materials for candidates. CCI wanted to create a model that could be used for this managerial program and possibly expand it to its other assessments as well.
Procedure: The Proven Solution
CCI enlisted its partner, Prometric, the global leader in technology-enabled testing and assessment, to help decipher the issue of starting a management certificate program along with the blended approach to testing. Prometric helped CCI realize that the data it had collected could be put to good use in a way that CCI hadn't initially intended.
Through Prometric's counsel, CCI looked at the managerial program in a different light. Rather than taking the approach that they had to justify a new "certification" program, Prometric advised that the organization could create an evidence-based "certificate" program that would serve as a learning and development resource as well as an assessment opportunity to its candidates. While lacking the renewable and "name-brand" qualities of a certification program, the certificate offering could be modular, portable, educational and open book.
It was decided that the Management Certificate Program would be marketed as both a development and assessment tool,, . For $199, candidates could purchase a six book set outlining and describing the healthcare manager career as defined by the job analysis conducted by CCI and Prometric. The cost also included a pre-test and post-test so candidates could gauge their level of knowledge before, and after, reviewing the materials.
The pre-test is taken at or around the time of purchase via Prometric's Internet-Based Testing (IBT) offering, providing candidate's with an immediate diagnostic profile. This profile shows the candidate which specific areas they need to work on with regard to the certificate program and essentially gives them an outline directing them to specific of areas of the books on which they should focus when studying. The post-test then reflects, via a pass or fail score, whether the candidate has learned the content.
Using Prometric's IBT allows candidates of the certificate program immediate assessment scoring and easy, "always on" access to the pre- and post-tests.
Final Diagnosis: Success
The program, implemented on September 1, 2007, has been very successful so far, with over 300 people purchasing the Management Certificate Program kit. Although candidate feedback has not yet been completed, the initial response to the launch and the materials has been positive.
CCI has been exceptionally happy with the creation and launch of the certificate program. Using Prometric's expertise, they were able to provide an additional valuable service to their constituents without having to validate and create an entirely new certification or credentialing program.
The organization has also been extremely happy with using Prometric's IBT tool for the certificate tests. The easy format is non-technical and allows any authorized person within CCI, regardless of technical knowledge, to make updates to the questions and course materials at any time. This flexibility and ease of use extends to the user-side, giving candidates the ability to take the exams when they want and where they want.
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The X-Ray: Future Plans
While no future evolutions are planned for the Manager Certificate Program other than routine information updates, CCI expects to apply the certificate program model to other clinical areas. As part of its 2008 strategic plan, CCI will consider which roles are best suited to this type of learning and assessment. CCI also uses Prometric's IBT offering to develop, deliver and maintain other credentialing-related products.
Specifically, the organization's e-practice exams are being offered via IBT. The e-practice exams are treated in the same manner as the official certification/credentialing exams, using the appropriate weighting and grading to give potential candidates an authentic test feel.
"We view Prometric as more of a partner than a vendor," said Shannon Carter, CEO of CCI. "They consistently come to the table with creative ideas and suggestions for bringing additional value to our candidates- while helping us achieve our mission to provide competency credentialing that enhances patient safety."