I was reading an article in the May 2014 edition of Psychiatric Times, An Update on the Maintenance of Certification Program for Psychiatry, by Patricia Vondrak, MBA, and Larry Faulkner, MD.
Notice, there's no link to the article. That's because I couldn't find it. Surprise #1.
I went to the Psychiatric Times site, and I searched under the title of the article. Nothing (Actually, 3 links to "Update on Opioids"). I put quotes around the title. Nothing. I tried the authors' names. Nothing. I looked under the "topics" heading for "practice management", which this section claimed to be in the print edition I was reading. Nothing. The print edition had a sidebar heading, "Special Report", so I checked the special reports section. Nothing. I did everything again and checked my spelling. Nothing.
This did not bode well.
The article describes:
The 4 components of the MOC process:
- Professionalism and Professional Standing
- Lifelong Learning and Self Assessment
- Assessment of Knowledge, Judgement and Skills
- Improvement in Medical Practice
It had a bunch of FAQs, number 5 of which was:
Why is CME required for Part 2 of the ABPN MOC program?
CME ensures that professional development activities have been developed according to rigorous standards, including avoidance of conflict of interest. (emphasis mine)
Really? You think Pharma-sponsored CME is rigorous and free of conflict of interest? I mean, no one believes that, and most people are resigned to it, but you really have the Chutzpah to blatantly state it in a publication?
I admit that while I was peeved, I was not surprised by this last.
I was excited about one part, though:
The ABMS provides an evidence library on their Web site that highlights research studies and articles that support the value of board certification and MOC. It reflects an effort to systematically present the empirical evidence in the current peer-reviewed literature.
I was excited because I thought, Okay, I'll check out the evidence library, and maybe I'll be reluctantly convinced that MOC is helpful, or maybe I'll find some article I can fiendishly try to refute, because that's just irresistible given how peeved I am.
I went to the evidence library.
I clicked on "Topics: Validation of Current MOC Programs". 34 hits, including articles on Family medicine, diabetes, lower back pain. I really just glanced. Then I restricted to "2010 to current", because I figured MOC now is very different than MOC in 2000. 14 hits. Then I went to keyword, "psychiatry and neurology", which they had listed-I didn't need to type it in to a search box.
Surprise #2, no hits.
I tried the same sequence, but with years 2000-2010. No hits.
I started over and changed the topic to "Value of Board Certification". Out of curiosity, I clicked the first link, appropriately entitled, Specialty Board Certification and Clinical Outcomes: The Missing Link, published in 2002. The authors looked at studies from 1966-1999. They started out with 1204 papers, but by the time they pared the list down to good studies that met their criteria, they had 13, from which they identified 33 "separable relevant findings".
Of the 33 findings, 16 demonstrated a significant positive association between certification status and positive clinical outcomes, three revealed worse outcomes for certified physicians, and 14 showed no association... Meta-analytic statistics were not feasible due to variability in outcome measures across studies.
Their conclusion:
Few published studies (5%) used research methods appropriate for the research question, and among the screened studies more than half support an association between board certification status and positive clinical outcomes.
Surprise #3-16 is more than half of 33!
I went back and went through the same timeframe and keyword search, and got no hits.
I went through the same process with the "framework and structure" topic, and again, no hits.
Maybe it's naive of me, but I really expected SOMETHING. I'm kind of disappointed. I was all ready for a fight.
Well, I guess I did find something. I googled the authors' names, and I ended up on the abpn site. Larry Faulkner is the President and CEO. I guess I'm lame for not realizing that to begin with. And Patti Vondrak is Director of Examination Administration.
Did you ever hear the expression, "The patient has GMG?" It's old medical slang for a patient with many complaints but no findings, and it stands for Gornisht Mit Gornisht, which is Yiddish for, "Nothing with Nothing". And as Shakespeare so famously wrote, "Nothing will come of nothing."