On Oct. 8, I sat for my fourth, every-10-year internal medicine certifying exam in 30 years. For a grueling eight hours, at age 60, fearing that I would not give it my best, I sat glued to a computer screen as scenarios and multiple choice answers flashed on the screen. In addition to a yearly $220 assessment, I paid an additional $700 just to take this test so that I wouldn’t have to change my usually enjoyable continuing medical education activities to this company’s educational materials.
On its surface, the certification by this group could be thought of as serving the public, assuring the patients that physicians are qualified, but arguments against this are that physicians who certified prior to 1993 are grandfathered from having to do more than one certification. Additionally, over the past several years, there has been a transition to physician assistants and nurse practitioners, and they don’t need this certification even though they have much less training.
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