Description of Certification
Credentialing is an umbrella term that includes concepts such as professional certification, certificate programs, accreditation, licensure, and regulation. There is often confusion about what certification is, and the term is often used in ways that add to the confusion and instead should be another credentialing concept/term. The SSH certifications follow this definition:
A certification program is designed to test the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to perform a particular job, and, upon successfully passing a certification exam, to represent a declaration of a particular individual’s professional competence.
Certifications require many different steps to design and deliver that are psychometrically supported and grounded in an extensive practice analysis. Certifications are for individuals, and not for organizations. The following diagram displays where certification fits into the credentialing world:
Overview of Development
The development of the SSH certifications began in 2008 when the Board of Directors authorized the investigation of the need and concepts that would support them. The development of the certifications has been driven by the following key concepts:
- Certification is a voluntary process.
- Certification will be seen as a service to our members and our communities of interest.
- Certification will confirm the knowledge, skills, and attitudes essential to instructors in the field of simulation.
- Certification, in order to maximize efficiency and impact, should be a cooperative effort between simulation and professional organizations.
- Certification will be time-limited and renewable
CHSE® first launched in 2012, followed by CHSOS® in 2014. SSH would like to thank the healthcare simulation community for supporting these certifications that continue to grow around the world.
Selection of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
Given the broad nature of where and how healthcare simulation takes place, it is important for the certifications to have the input of individuals who possess extensive knowledge and experience in healthcare simulation from many perspectives. SSH is dedicated to ensuring that representation in the design of the certifications at all stages includes the voices of:
- simulation modality
- setting (locations where simulation takes place)
- geographic location
- learner population
- function (e.g. teaching, assessment)
- profession
Through capturing the many voices that are part of the healthcare simulation community, the resulting certifications serve to measure competency. SSH would like to thank the many SMEs who have helped develop the certifications over the years.
Practice Analysis
A Practice Analysis (PA, also called a Job Analysis) is the rigorous and systematic study of a profession to describe the job responsibilities of those employed in the profession. This information is then used to identify the knowledge and skills required to effectively carry out those responsibilities. The PA is essential to creating a certification and any product that is created without a practice analysis should not be held out as a certification.
The most recent PA for both CHSE® and CHSOS® was performed internationally in 2022-2023 with SMEs from around the globe at the meetings in Tampa, Singapore, and Milan. The purpose of these international meetings was to develop two lists of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) deemed essential for both the healthcare simulation educator and the healthcare simulation operations specialist. These lists were then distributed in a survey to healthcare simulation practitioners worldwide with the goal of validating these KSA lists and using the feedback to develop test specifications for the CHSE® and CHSOS®, respectively.
More than 600 healthcare simulation educators from 24 countries and more than 175 healthcare simulation operations specialists from 13 countries provided feedback though the survey. Data analysis was performed by the vendor’s psychometric staff to evaluate means, standard deviations, and frequency (percentage) distributions for importance and content coverage ratings, means and standard deviations for test content recommendations, index of agreement values for designated subgroups, and crosstabs for selected demographic questions. The psychometric staff concluded results of the studies support all of the KSA statements for both programs being verified as important through the survey. This data provides the foundation of empirically derived information to form the test specifications for both the CHSE® and CHSOS®.
The studies used a multi-method approach to identify the tasks and knowledge that are important to the work performed by Healthcare Simulation Educators and Healthcare Simulation Operations Specialists. The results of the studies were used to develop the test specifications, or exam blueprints, for the CHSE® exam and the CHSOS® exam. The resulting examination blueprints are indicative of the worldwide practice of simulation that is consistent around the globe at the two-year competency level. The blueprints were made available to the public in August 2023 and their content launched on their respective exam titles in January 2024.
Item Writing Description
The items that are written for the CHSE® and CHSOS® examinations undergo a multi-step process. From the initial idea for a question, the question is then reviewed by multiple SMEs at in-person and virtual meetings, focused first on the individual items, and then on the creation of the exam forms. SSH’s psychometric partners, Schroeder Measurement Technologies, Inc. (SMT), oversees the entire process of creation, review, and statistical analysis of every item and the forms, ensuring that the exams created meet the desired intent—to measure the knowledge, skills, and abilities of individuals at the two-year competency level.
Standard Setting
There are several recognized processes for standard setting. For the CHSE® and CHSOS® standard setting studies, our testing vendor, Prometric, recommended and adopted the Angoff method. The Angoff method requires recruiting a group of subject matter experts (SMEs) who are tasked with collaborating to reach consensus on a definition of the minimally competent candidate and then apply that definition to the test. SMEs do this by reading and answering each item on the test and predict the proportion of minimally competent candidates who would answer each item correctly. Resulting ratings are analyzed and discussed with the participating SMEs.
The SMEs are then given an opportunity to affirm or revise their original ratings. Prometric psychometric staff then sums the ratings across items and across SMEs and provides a recommended cut score. Prometric facilitated these standard setting workshops for the CHSE® and CHSOS® in March of 2024 and the results were a defensible passing score for each exam title. A defensible passing score is rooted in a fully informed decision and not one based on a desired passing rate. The passing standard set by these workshops are slated to be in place until 2029. For more information on the passing point for either exam, please refer to the candidate handbook.
Equating
Since multiple forms (exams) are used with each certification, it is necessary to equate the scores of each exam. The purpose is to ensure that no matter which form is used for a candidate, there is a fair and equal chance of passing. SSH works with SMT to analyze the data from the exam forms, comparing the shared and unique content, and working to assign cut scores that are fair and equivalent for each form.