By John Schumann, MD
An interesting conversation recently took place among residency program directors in my field of Internal Medicine.
Testing the old-fashioned way.
At issue was the declining pass rate of first-time test takers of the ABIM Certification Exam.
It's a mouthful to say, but the ABIM exam is the ultimate accolade for internists; one is only eligible to take the exam after having successfully completed a three-year residency training period (the part that includes "internship," right after medical school).
An easy analogy is to say that the board exam is for a doctor what the bar exam is for a lawyer. The difference is that a doctor can still practice if s/he does not pass–they might be excluded from certain jobs or hospital staffs; but certification, while important, is a bit of gilding the lily. [Licensure to practice comes from a different set of exams.]
There's no doubt it's a hard test. I was tremendously relieved to have passed it on my first try. Over the last few years, the pass rate for first time takers has fallen from ~90% to a low of 84%.
It may not seem significant, but for 7300 annual test takers, the difference in pass rates affects about 365 people–or one additional non-passing doctor for every day of the year.
In any event, we program directors have taken note. And the falling pass rate has raised questions:
- Has the test increased in difficulty? No, says the ABIM.
- Are the study habits of millennials not up to the level of Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers? Now you may be on to something.
One concern that has a ring of truth to it is that young doctors have become great "looker-uppers," and have lost the sense of what it's like to actually read and study medicine. While doctors enter the profession with a commitment to lifelong learning, some of us fear that the young folk only go far enough to commit to lifelong googling.
Another key point: in today's era of restricted work hours, something has to give. Too often, when residents must complete the same amount of work in a limited amount of time, what's sacrificed is the didactic portion of the education: the stuff we do by running through case after case, discussing subtleties and action plans. When time is limited, the work's simply gotta get done.
There's even a term that describes this phenomenon: Work compression.
John H. Schumann, MD is a general internist and medical educator at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine in Tulsa, OK . He is also author of the blog,GlassHospital (@GlassHospital), where this post originally appeared.
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