Summary of the 2006 College of American Pathologists Gynecologic Cytology Proficiency Testing Program.

Context: Creating a tool that assesses professional proficiency in gynecologic cytology is challenging. A valid proficiency test (PT) must reflect practice conditions, evaluate locator and interpretive skills, and discriminate between those practitioners who are competent and those who need more education. The College of American Pathologists Gynecologic Cytology Proficiency Testing Program (PAPPT) was approved to enroll participants in a nationwide PT program in 2006.
Objective: Report results from the 2006 PAPPT program.
Design: Summarize PT results by pass/fail rate, participant type, and slide-set modules.
Results: Nine thousand sixty-nine participants showed initial PT failure rates of 5%, 16%, and 6% for cytotechnologists, primary screening pathologists, and secondary screening pathologist, respectively. The overall initial test failure rate was 6%. After 3 retests, 9029 (99.6%) of the participants were able to achieve compliance with the PT requirement. No participant "tested out"; however, 40 individuals "dropped out" of the testing sequence (8 cytotechnologists, 9 primary screening pathologists, 23 secondary screening pathologists). Initial failure rates by slide-set modules were 6% conventional, 6% ThinPrep, 6% SurePath, and 5% mixture of all 3 slide types.
Conclusions: A total of 99.6% of individuals enrolled in the 2006 PAPPT program achieved satisfactory results. The data confirm that cytotechnologists have higher initial pass rates than pathologists and pathologists who are secondary screeners perform better than those who are primary screeners. There was no difference identified in overall pass rates between the slide-set modules. Further analysis of data should help define the results and ongoing challenges of providing a nationwide federally mandated proficiency testing program in gynecologic cytology.