VOLUME 26, ISSUE 2
Russell K. McAllister Education Editor
BACK TO THE BASICS OF BOARD EXAMS
Certification as a Diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology is in the process of dramatic changes. I recently visited the ABA’s offices in Raleigh, North Carolina to learn more about the changes.
One of the first changes will occur later this month on July 28th and 29th, as the new CA-2 residents will take the first administration of the ABA’s Basic Exam. This will be a 250 question exam over basic topics in anesthesiology.
To be eligible for this exam, the resident must have satisfactorily completed 18 months of training (including clinical base and clinical anesthesiology) prior to March 31st. The exam will be administered twice a year.
Failure of the first attempt will lead to the resident taking the exam at the next available administration. If the resident fails the exam twice, the ABA mandates an unsatisfactory on the Clinical Competency Committee report for the period in which the exam was taken and every subsequent period until the exam is passed. Two consecutive CCC reports that contain an unsatisfactory on any of the core competencies will result in extension of the resident’s training period by 6 months. Residents will not be able to register for the advanced examination or graduate from the training program without passing the basic examination. Individual programs will have discretion as to how many failures they will allow before considering dismissal of the resident from the training program.
The In Training Examination, a joint effort by the ASA and ABA, will continue to be administered as it is currently and will be a 50:50 mix of basic and advanced topics. The scoring of the exam will now provide separate scores for the basic and advanced content along with the combined scaled score. It will continue to have no bearing on the certification process.
The ABA’s Advanced Exam will be first administered in July of 2016 and then, every January and July thereafter. It will be a 250 question exam that covers basic and advanced topics with an emphasis on advanced content. Candidates can sit for the exam up to twice a year.
The ABA’s Applied Exam will be administered for the first time in 2017 and will consist of two components: a standardized oral exam (unchanged from current format) and an objective structured clinical exam (OSCE) that may consist of standardized patients, communication scenarios, monitoring
