Factors influencing performance on the Board Certified Psychiatric Pharmacist Examination: Passing rates and domain-level scores

The Board Certified Psychiatric Pharmacist (BCPP) specialty certification was launched by the Board of Pharmacy Specialties in 1994. Candidates for the BCPP can qualify for the examination through 3 possible pathways: practice experience (4 years) in the specialty, completion of a PGY-1 residency plus an additional 2 years of practice experience, or completion of a PGY-2 specialty residency in psychiatric pharmacy. Recent fluctuations in the passing rate raised questions as to explanatory factors. This article represents the first published comprehensive study of candidate performance on the BCPP Examination. It describes a retrospective, observational study presenting (a) statistical trends of examination passing rates for biannual cohorts over the past 5 years, as well as (b) score distributions on the 3 performance domains of the certification. Pass-rate trend analyses suggest that variation in the proportion of eligibility pathway cohorts in the respective testing samples explains some of the fluctuation in passing rates. An analysis of variance of domain-level scores, using groups defined by eligibility pathway, yielded significant differences for nearly all group comparisons. Evaluation of the effect sizes suggest that the most disparate performance was observed on the core clinical domain, Patient-Centered Care. The results of this study are consistent with previously published research and will inform the upcoming role delineation study for the Psychiatric Pharmacy Certification.