Reliability of the oral certifying examination for neurologists: Comparison of test results using live patient interviews and audiovisual techniques
✍ Scribed by Dr Patrick F. Bray
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1979
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 278 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0364-5134
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Each of the twenty-two specialty boards approved by the American Board of Medical Specialties and the American Medical Association evaluates the qualifications of candidates in its field who appear voluntarily for examination, and certifies as diplomates those who are considered competent. To accomplish this function, specialty boards determine whether candidates have received adequate preparation in accordance with established educational standards. They provide comprehensive examinations to evaluate the ability of candidates, and they certify as physicians qualified to practice within a specialty those who have satisfied the requirements.
Prior to October, 1976, the examination of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology included two hour-long sessions with patients. For reasons to be cited in the Discussion, the Board began at that time to substitute one hour of television-taped patient examination for one of the two Part I1 oral examination hours in the candidate's major field.
To determine the degree of concordance or nonconcordance between the different formats of oral examination and to ascertain whether one of the two methods of testing in clinical neurology is a better discriminator in identifying a candidate's competence or lack of competence, the pass-fail-conditional grades achieved with these two test methods were compared for 816 candidates at seven consecutive sessions over a two-year period.