Does a Longitudinal Assessment Program for a Medical Specialty Continuing Certification Program Work as Designed?

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring New Worlds: Program Evaluation and Learner Assessment (Table 7)

Abstract

longitudinal assessment (LA) is quickly replacing traditional assessment methods for maintaining medical specialty certifications. Diplomates of one medical specialty board complete 30 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) per calendar quarter, 120 questions annually to maintain their certifications. This study included 5,804,640 responses to LA questions administered to 25,419 physicians during 2018 and 2019. A proportion of physicians’ LA questions are “repeat questions” that they initially answered incorrectly. The median interval before a question was first repeated was 291 days. The average percentage of correct responses to questions seen a 2nd time was 9% higher than that of the questions seen the 1st time. Answering a question correctly was more strongly associated with physicians’ confidence rating than with their question relevance rating.

Authors

• Huaping Sun, The American Board of Anesthesiology
  Presenting Author

• Youngjun Lee, The American Board of Anesthesiology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ann Elizabeth Harman, American Board of Anesthesiology
  Non-Presenting Author