ALTERATIONS IN THE ALPHABET SOUP OF ACADEMIC ANESTHESIOLOGY

Changes in the Residency Program Accreditation and ABA Certification

Russell K. McAllister, MD
Academics Editor
Residents and faculty at our training programs will see many changes in the coming years. The residency accrediting group, the ACGME, will introduce the “Next Accreditation System” (NAS) in July 2013 for multiple specialties.

Anesthesiology will be added to the NAS in July 2014 during phase two. The new system will eliminate the usual 1‐5 year accreditation cycles and place all programs on a 10 year self‐study review cycle. Sponsoring institutions will now be visited approximately every 18 months during a Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER).

The new system is designed to be a continuously updated process. The NAS will rely upon resident case logs, resident and faculty surveys of their program, resident board pass rates, Clinical Competence Committee (CCC) reports, and data related to resident attrition. This data combined with information gathered during the CLER visit will provide the Residency Review Committees (RRC) with an overview of the program and allow the committee to identify trends in the training programs. The RRC may choose to schedule a visit outside of the usual 10 year cycle in order to assist programs in any trouble areas that may be identified.

In addition, the ACGME will introduce the Milestones project. Milestones will be developed on the foundation of the 6 core competencies and will allow each specialty to identify the behaviors and attributes that should be present at the completion of each year of residency training. The CCC of each program will be charged with determining if each resident trainee has met each of the milestones for their level of training. Further details can be found at the ACGME website (www.acgme.org).

Current residents who will finish training after December 31, 2015 will also see changes in the certification process of The American Board of Anesthesiologists (ABA). There will now be three exams: the basic, advanced, and applied examinations. The basic exam will be a written exam over the scientific basis of clinical anesthetic practice administered at the completion of the CA‐I year beginning July 2014, and every January and July from that point forward. Residents must pass this exam prior to being promoted to their CA‐III year. Two failures of the exam will lead to an automatic unsatisfactory for that six month period and all that follow until the exam has been successfully passed.

The advanced exam will focus on the clinical aspects of anesthetic practice and will emphasize subspecialty and advanced clinical issues. This exam will be administered in August for those who have just completed residency.

The former oral exam will become the applied exam and the format will change to include elements of Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) in addition to the oral examination questions.

 

Further information about the changes can be found at the ABA and ACGME websites:

http://www.theaba.org
http://www.acgme.org/acgmeweb/

Russell K. McAllister, MD
Academics Editor

In addition, the ABA has changed the format for those who do not successfully pass the advanced or applied exams.

Candidates must now successfully pass all 3 of the exams within 7 years of the last day of the year in which residency training was completed. This may include any combination of failures on the advanced or applied exams. The ABA has stated publically that they do not anticipate additional exam fees associated with the format change.

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