THE CONTINUING COMPETENCE NEEDS OF PHYSICIANS - A SURVEY OF THE MEDICAL SPECIALTY SOCIETIES - PERSPECTIVE

The exchange of information among the medical specialty boards regarding assessment protocols, testing outcomes, and validity studies has had an important effect on how individual boards choose to accomplish their goal of validating competence [1]. With many recertification programs firmly in place, the focus now shifts to the societies' responses to recertification and to the emerging needs of their members as they face the prospect of documenting continuing competence. How the specialty societies understand and complement the efforts of their certifying boards and what types of programs they are developing in response to the continuing competence and recertification needs of their individual members is information that has not, to date, been collected or reported. The Task Force on Continuing Competence of the American College of Radiology developed a questionnaire to gather data on recertification and on the support programs developed by professional societies for recertification and continuing competence.