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Physician burnout is a serious problem and you have theimpression that morale among the physicians at your facility is ata low point. You administer a survey to get some quantitative data,as well as some suggestions for improvement. One of the most commonsuggestions is that hiring physician extenders (PAs, scribes, orother extenders) would improve things. Your supervisor gives youpermission to hire some physician extenders, but wants to know ifthe investment achieves significant results. You decide toadminister a second survey six months following the hiring ofphysician extenders and will do a t-test to see if there’s asignificant change in the survey results compared to the resultsfrom the survey prior to the hiring.

Here is the data, from the twosurveys:

Physician number	Survey #1 average score (out of 10)	Survey #2 average score (out of 10)
01	7.2	7.5
02	6.5	6.7
03	5.5	4.8
04	5.5	6.4
05	6.8	7.4
06	8.0	9.0
07	8.3	7.8
08	4.3	5.5
09	7.1	8.0
10	6.6	7.1
11	4.5	5.0
12	7.9	7.4
13	4.6	5.3
14	6.5	6.0
15	5.8	6.5

This is an example of using a paired samples (repeatedsamples) t-test. In Excel, the “type” parameterfor the paired samples t-test is ‘1’. Since we don’t knowif the new hiring will improve or worsen the survey results (younever know … the new hires could make things more difficult),this will be a two-tailed t-test. The“tails” parameter in Excel is ‘2’.

Note: The result that Exceldisplays when you run the t-test is the p-value. You don’thave to do anything else. It may just be a single value that Exceldisplays, or it may appear in a table of values and labeled ‘P(T<=t) two tail’. If Excel displays a table of values it alsowill include the t-statistic and the t-critical value. You don’thave to go to a table of critical values to find it.

1. Using Excel, determine whether there has been a significantchange in the survey results. Copy and paste your Excel data andresult. (Just copy and paste the portion of the Excel page that hasyour work on it; do not copy and paste the entire Excel page …they’re huge!) (10)
2. What is your conclusion about the effect of hiring physicianextenders? (5)