Sunday, September 16, 2018

Resident Recall - "Cheating" or Part of Free Speech?

Read the opinion piece referenced below carefully. It discusses the widespread use of "resident recall" to study for the American Board of Radiology's board certification examinations by both residents AND faculty/senior physicians:

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/radiol.12120251

Then read the back story on how the American Board of Medicine threatened internists in 2010 on the basis of the threat to their training monopoly:

http://drwes.blogspot.com/2016/06/maintenance-of-certification-medicines.html

Then ask yourself: who has "cheated" whom?

It is clear that the American Board of Medical Specialties, who continues to promote its lavish ABMS Conferences with "stakeholders" in Las Vegas (full schedule here), has a serious problem on its hands. This problem is exacerbated when it claims to work collectively with "500 professionals from across the health care community who, working together, will accelerate the transformation of Board Certification and the delivery of quality patient care."

Where's the data a computer test and secret data collection scheme does anything except raise prices and stroke the egos/bank accounts of the boards' leadership?

What do these Las Vegas boondoggles do to reestablish trust in the ABMS board certification process?

The answer is quite simple:

Nothing.

-Wes



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It has been well known that radiology resident radiologists have recalls. The point of of studying is to know the material and not the part of the educator to stump the the person taking the test. The issue is that the ABR called the people taking a test vs. the ABIM, ACP and the other colluders who package study material so that the test takers have to buy them. The ABR were just bad business men and called the test takers, cheaters instead of strong arming them like the ABIM and ABIMS. They proved themselves to be a bunch of clowns.

Anonymous said...

I looked at the schedule for the stake holders and there is a Kaiser MOC presentation. It seems that the reach of Dr. Christine Cassel is long and she has used it to manipulate TPMG and Kaiser permanente to force them to MOC as they are showing their MOC projects offered to Kaiser physicians. I wonder if any Kaiser physicians read this blog and how would they feel knowing they have been abused and manipulated.

DOJ has spoken said...

Simple logic...... If the MOC questions are so critically important for patient care, and knowing the answers and passing the exam on these questions are "THE ONLY" way to prove that you are competent to your patients as (trained, already CERTIFIED, and experienced) specialists, and would not be a risk to the patients, ABMS/ABIM should make sure the answers to the questions are widely and fully circulated and NOT to be kept as "propriety" "BUSINESS SECRETS". That is of course only IF ABMS/ABIM's true intention is patients well being and NOT $$$ (and Power, and Control). Truth is Simple. Cannot have it any other way. ABOLISH MOC (not reform it).