From the ABR’s July 19 email:
Some of you are wondering why it has taken so long for the ABR to provide a solution. We apologize for the delay as we know this has been stressful for you. More than 450 candidates were affected by this situation. The cause of the problem was not initially apparent, and it was important for us to have time to investigate, review preliminary scores of all candidates, obtain direction from our board members and some program directors, and devise a solution that was most appropriate for all stakeholders, including you, your program, and your patients.
The ABR board also received input from the breast imaging community, which feels it is imperative for residents to be tested on breast content at some point in the certification process. The board members considered requiring a breast module on the Certifying Exam for those who did not receive the module on the Core Exam. However, all were concerned that more than two years of delay would require you to study again for the breast module.
The board feels strongly that we must administer the content as soon as possible, and that we should not require travel, other expenses, or additional resources, which is aligned with what we have heard from the breast imaging community. Therefore, we decided that we should trust you to take the online module in a setting of your choice. In addition, the breast module has been carefully edited to ensure that all findings are visible without the need for a high resolution monitor.
[…] We will schedule residents who need to take the breast imaging module at specific times on two dates: September 7 and September 18, 2017. You will select your desired start time when you register.
Still missing: what actually happened in Chicago, what the technical glitch was, how they’ve taken steps to prevent this from happening again, how this module is graded, how “hard” it will be to pass, if it’s actually possible to fail, and a finally—what happens if someone actually manages to fail.
It is interesting that you can take it anywhere you want but that you still must take it at specific times—presumably a compromise to prevent cheating/sharing of the exam content without resorting to using an official testing center. The real exam is proctored with a bathroom monitor, but the fabled mammo content is on the honor code. To me, this is highly suggestive of lip service to an apparently deeply hurt mammography community.
And, speaking of testing centers, the ABR recently released the following narrative about why they haven’t been able to disseminate the exam:
These delivery requirements have proven to be insurmountable obstacles for the numerous commercial testing vendors that we’ve engaged over the years. It’s important to remember that the vast majority of these vendors’ clients deliver text-based question exams with little or no multimedia content.
[…]
Just last year, we engaged two prominent commercial testing vendors to explore our goal of delivering the diagnostic radiology initial certification exams at local testing centers. Both vendors were given in-depth details of our exam delivery needs and asked to provide a proposal for our consideration […]
…but neither was interested.
I like that they’ve finally publically responded to these perennial requests.
I imagine these two were Prometric and Pearson VUE, because (despite the claim of “numerous” vendors) there are only a handful of large commercial testing centers around that could possibly furnish the exam. I suppose it’s possible the big two passed in years past. I have no doubt that the ABR’s demands for administration are not worth the time and expense for most vendors to meet given the low exam volume. The follow-up question, however, is whether or not it’s possible to write a Core exam that can be disseminated.
For example, the video portions of the exam are small in number and generally useless outside of cardiac MR (which, if we’re being honest, plays a comically outsized role on the test). The multi-slice scrolling capacity is rarely used and usually only a handful of images anyway. Mammo and radiographs could be selected that do not require high-resolution high-filesize images. The ACR in-service exam, of note, was able to snag a contract and is also image-based.
We are committed to making the initial certification process as facile as possible. While our past efforts have not been successful, we will continue to pursue our goal (and your wish) of delivering diagnostic radiology exams in local commercial testing centers. As we all know, technology is constantly evolving, and perhaps local exam delivery will become more feasible in the future.
I don’t doubt that the exam the ABR created couldn’t be ported to Prometric as is. Shucks, it didn’t even work in Chicago. But couldn’t we have a Core Exam that was functionally equivalent but wasn’t so off-putting? Exams need to be written with the administration in mind from the onset, not just as an afterthought.
Perhaps putting our hopes in the possibility that bandwidth and memory will be so cheap one day that testing companies won’t find our poorly written and conceived exam so unpalatable isn’t the best plan.
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