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“Practice Makes Perfect”…or Does It?
- Steven E. Weinberger, MD;
- F. Daniel Duffy, MD; and
- Christine K. Cassel, MD
- From the American College of Physicians and American Board of Internal Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19106.
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IN RESPONSE:
Dr. Neubauer raises important concerns emphasizing fundamental principles that ABIM is working to accomplish with maintenance of certification and that the College believes are important for all internists. Reducing the complexity of the process and making maintenance of certification in the core discipline of internal medicine attractive to subspecialists are goals that both organizations strongly support. The secure examination component of maintenance of certification can cause anxiety, particularly if there is a perception that physicians will be tested on obscure factual knowledge or on information that is not relevant to their practice. The ABIM and the College are now working together through a joint committee to reduce the anxiety about the examination, to improve its composition and content, and to provide more accurate information about the examination and how it is developed. Specifically, among the goals of the joint working committee are the following: 1) clarifying important differences between the content of the certification examination and the content of the maintenance of certification examination; 2) stressing that the maintenance of certification examination is testing physician judgment rather than factual recall; and 3) developing and refining questions to focus on core content that is clinically relevant to both general internists and subspecialists. Detailed information is available at http://www.abim.org.
Although none of the authors of the editorial has a personal financial conflict of interest relating to the editorial's content, Dr. Breite is correct that there are potential institutional conflicts of interest for the ABIM and the College when discussing physician education and maintenance of certification. These conflicts were indeed noted by the authors from both organizations on the disclosure forms that we completed and submitted. Nonetheless, we would disagree that there is a conflict of interest in having the 2 organizations work together to improve the maintenance of certification process. Development of questions by the ABIM and creation of educational materials by the College are entirely independent processes, with strict guidelines prohibiting a physician's participation in both processes. Most strongly, we believe each organization has a responsibility to contribute in its own way to enabling physicians to maintain and improve their knowledge and skills.
Steven E. Weinberger, MD
American College of Physicians
Philadelphia, PA 19106
F. Daniel Duffy, MD
Christine K. Cassel, MD
American Board of Internal Medicine
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Article and Author Information
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Potential Financial Conflicts of Interest: Dr. Weinberger is an employee of the American College of Physicians. Drs. Duffy and Cassel are employees of the American Board of Internal Medicine.
