My old Kentucky home, goodnight: potential impact of planned changes in the radiology board certification process.

摘要

On October 26, 2007, the American Board of Radiology (ABR) posted on its Website (www.theabr.org) plans to change the primaryradiology board certification process:1. The ABR intends to replace the current physics and diagnostic radiology written examinations with a computer-based "radiology core examination" that will include case presentations requiring knowledge of anatomy, pathophysiology, and principles of radiologic physics. The examination will include all 11 areas now covered on the oral and physics examination, with each area scored separately. Similar to the current oral examination, examinees may pass all sections, condition up to 3 sections, or fail the examination. This will take place 36 months after the beginning of radiology residency training, with makeup examinations offered every 6 months.2. The ABR plans to replace the current general oral examination, which now occurs during the last month of residency, with a more specialty-specific computer-based examinationencompassing up to four areas of concentration-to be selected by the examinee. A fifth "general content" module will be given to all examinees, and will test material pertinent to all diagnostic radiologists such as safety, contrast reactions, professionalism, etc. This will be administered 15 months after completion of residency training.The clinical examination modules are expected to be graduated. In other words, if an examinee chooses a given subspecialty for 25% of the examination, he or she will be tested on basic elements in that area, whereas if he or she chooses 50-100% of a given specialty, he or she will be givenmore advanced subspecialty questions. Although the content of the examinations will become more specialty-specific, the Board still plans to certify graduates broadly as diagnostic radiologists. The Board is currently not planning to publish the specific makeup of each individual's tailored examination.This policy brief examines how these changes-specifically those of (1) content and (2)timing of the oral board examination-may impact the major radiology stakeholders in the certification process: training programs, academic centers, private groups, and individual radiologists.