ABPN MOC Part III Pilot Project

[NJWxMan]

I received an email in December 2017 indicating that I was eligible to participate in the MOC Pilot Project. In summary, if you complete the pilot, you are excused from taking the MOC exam. The pilot consists of 30 5-question quizzes during a several year span of time (you must achieve 80% on each quiz). I recommend reading the ABPN website about the pilot before jumping into it. There are clearly a number of flaws in the pilot and unfairness to go along with it.

1) If you are not able to find free access to the articles, you must PURCHASE access to the journal articles (as the articles are not supplied to you).
2) If you fail just ONE out of the 30 quizzes, you must take the exam.
3) For those that failed just one pilot quiz, you get ONLY ONE chance to take the exam (while those not in the pilot get TWO chances to pass the exam without losing board certification status).

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[wolfvgang22]

On the other hand, the questions are open book, so unless the questions are just terribly written, it shouldn't be hard to answer the questions.

I think the articles should be provided by the ABPN at no cost since you still have to pay the yearly MOC fee test takers pay. That would be the right thing for them to do.

 

[splik]

all papers are freely illegal available on the internet anyway.
the ABPN is not going to pay for the articles for you (which wouldn't make any sense and they would pass the cost on to you).
if you can't pass easy open book MCQs then you deserve to lose your certification.
99% of people pass the exam anyway.
you can always choose to not participate in this scam if you so wish to.

 

[aim-agm]

Sounds like a scam. They should give you a single 150 question exam instead of giving you 30 chances to get 2 questions wrong out of 5. Lets run the numbers:
-Requiring an 80% grade requires at least an .8 probability of getting any given question right, or at most a .2 chance of getting it wrong.
-The likelihood of getting two questions wrong out of 5 with those probabilities is .04, giving a 96% chance to pass a given test.
-With a probability of passing each test of .96, the chance of passing all 30 is 29%
-To have a 90% chance of passing the 30 tests you must have a >.94 probability to get any given question right, .96 for 95%, or >.98 for 99% of people taking the thirty quizzes to pass like 99% of the people taking the single exam.

The question is not whether this is a scam designed to take advantage of people with a poor grasp of math, it's what the objective of the scam is.

 

[slappy]

Sounds like a scam. They should give you a single 150 question exam instead of giving you 30 chances to get 2 questions wrong out of 5. Lets run the numbers:
-Requiring an 80% grade requires at least an .8 probability of getting any given question right, or at most a .2 chance of getting it wrong.
-The likelihood of getting two questions wrong out of 5 with those probabilities is .04, giving a 96% chance to pass a given test.
-With a probability of passing each test of .96, the chance of passing all 30 is 29%
-To have a 90% chance of passing the 30 tests you must have a >.94 probability to get any given question right, .96 for 95%, or >.98 for 99% of people taking the thirty quizzes to pass like 99% of the people taking the single exam.

The question is not whether this is a scam designed to take advantage of people with a poor grasp of math, it's what the objective of the scam is.

Good math. Alternatively, they could require 27 successes (instead of 30) for a P(X>=x) of 97% (or 28 successes for 88% or even 29 successes for 66%) in the same Bernoulli process.

 

[Shikima]

What would be an example "paper" to review and the types of questions?

 

[Doctor Freud]

I received an email in December 2017 indicating that I was eligible to participate in the MOC Pilot Project. In summary, if you complete the pilot, you are excused from taking the MOC exam. The pilot consists of 30 5-question quizzes during a several year span of time (you must achieve 80% on each quiz). I recommend reading the ABPN website about the pilot before jumping into it. There are clearly a number of flaws in the pilot and unfairness to go along with it.

1) If you are not able to find free access to the articles, you must PURCHASE access to the journal articles (as the articles are not supplied to you).
2) If you fail just ONE out of the 30 quizzes, you must take the exam.
3) For those that failed just one pilot quiz, you get ONLY ONE chance to take the exam (while those not in the pilot get TWO chances to pass the exam without losing board certification status).

This isn't correct. I have corresponded with ABPN about this.

You can fail up to 10 quizzes and still pass, fail 11 quizzes and you fail.

You still have two chances to take the regular exam if you fail.

My issue with the Pilot Project is what the questions will be like. Are they fairly straightforward or complicated, with some interpretation as to what may be the right answer?

If the questions are straightforward I might take a chance with the Pilot.

 

[wolfvgang22]

This isn't correct. I have corresponded with ABPN about this.

You can fail up to 10 quizzes and still pass, fail 11 quizzes and you fail.

You still have two chances to take the regular exam if you fail.

My issue with the Pilot Project is what the questions will be like. Are they fairly straightforward or complicated, with some interpretation as to what may be the right answer?

If the questions are straightforward I might take a chance with the Pilot.

Can you post the email (without your name) or source you have for this information? Because the ABPN website agrees with what NJWxman posted when I looked at it about a month ago.

 

[Doctor Freud]

Can you post the email (without your name) or source you have for this information? Because the ABPN website agrees with what NJWxman posted when I looked at it about a month ago.

The email, without my name, is below:

Thank you for your interest in the Pilot Project.


For the Pilot exam, you will read a minimum of 30 articles but no more than 40 articles and answer 4 out of the 5 questions correctly on the first attempt on 30 journal article exams. Once a diplomate has failed 11 of the mini-exams, then unfortunately they have failed the entire Pilot exam.



If a diplomate fails the Pilot exam, they will have to pass the traditional 10-Year MOC examination to remain board certified. Diplomates will be allowed two consecutive attempts at the traditional 10-Year MOC examination if he/she fails the Pilot Project. The first examination will be at no additional cost. Certifications will not lapse during that time period.


Please let me know if you have any additional questions.


Elisa Beile

Administrative Support Specialist

American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology, Inc.


Phone: 847.229.6565 Ext: 565 Fax: 847.229.6600

 

[Doctor Freud]

From the ABPN website FAQ section for the Pilot:


How many articles must be read for successful completion of the pilot?

30 out of 40 journal article mini-exams must be successfully completed in order for a diplomate to meet the MOC Part III examination requirement. A diplomate must read a minimum of 30 articles but no more than 40 articles and answer 4 out of 5 questions correctly on the first attempt on 30 journal article mini-exams.

If you score 5 out of 5 correct on 29 article mini-exams, you still must successfully complete a 30th article with 4 out of 5 correct questions on the first attempt to complete the pilot.

 

[Doctor Freud]

Also from the FAQ section:

What will happen if a diplomate is unsuccessful or does not complete the Pilot Project?

Diplomates are then required to pass the traditional 10-Year MOC examination to remain board certified. Diplomates will be allowed two consecutive attempts at the traditional 10-Year MOC examination if he/she fails or does not complete the Pilot Project in order to remain certified. The first examination will be at no additional cost; however, there will be the standard fee if a second examination is needed.

 

[wolfvgang22]

The email, without my name, is below:

Thank you for your interest in the Pilot Project.


For the Pilot exam, you will read a minimum of 30 articles but no more than 40 articles and answer 4 out of the 5 questions correctly on the first attempt on 30 journal article exams. Once a diplomate has failed 11 of the mini-exams, then unfortunately they have failed the entire Pilot exam.



If a diplomate fails the Pilot exam, they will have to pass the traditional 10-Year MOC examination to remain board certified. Diplomates will be allowed two consecutive attempts at the traditional 10-Year MOC examination if he/she fails the Pilot Project. The first examination will be at no additional cost. Certifications will not lapse during that time period.


Please let me know if you have any additional questions.


Elisa Beile

Administrative Support Specialist

American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology, Inc.


Phone: 847.229.6565 Ext: 565 Fax: 847.229.6600

Thanks, I appreciate your posts.

 

[whopper]

Two major POTENTIAL (emphasis on this word cause it might work out) problems I see with the pilot program (and I'm in it) are this.
1) The articles are coming from journals where if you're not faculty you could be paying A LOT OF MONEY to get them. I'm an APA member and I'm expecting most of the articles to be available through them. So if that happens I'll be okay, but it's possible that might not happen. If they pick several journal articles all from differing journals this can be a problem. Most doctors don't have subscriptions to multiple journals.

2) The quality of the questions may be garbage. Like the PRITE they might be poorly written and not good indicators of what the person really knows. I don't see a method in place to question the questions. In defense of the ABPN the quality of the questions in the actual board exam were pretty good, but that doesn't prove the quality of their pilot program questions will be good.

What I like about it is it uses data concerning the future of the field, not the past. Many board exam questions you can tell are years old and likely haven't changed for decades.

Too early to see if this plays out well. I can see some docs being really ticked off if they fail the pilot.

 

[alina_s]

Is anyone else confused about how long certification will be good for? In one place, it sounds like if I pass 30 quizzes, it's just like passing the exam and I'm good for another 10 years. However, it also sounds like they may start an every 3 year process in 2022. If they're considering 30 articles and quizzes every 3 years, I'd rather sit down and take the regular exam.

 

[whopper]

Once I actually see the actual questions myself I might have a very different opinion. I might start saying "EFF THIS PILOT!"

But the way I'm seeing it now, if I had to do an article a month, this is a great way to reinforce keeping up to date with the future of psychiatry instead of the past. Most doctors I know don't regularly read up on journals. I think the better doctors keep up with them. It's refreshing to see people on top of the current data instead of keeping with practices years old if not decades old.

Also it gives me a pace to accomplish these tasks at my own pace instead of taking a day off that will cost me pretty much over $1500 in gross revenue and that's just for taking the exam itself. E.g. I'm waiting at the oil change place, I can likely get one done.

So for now, I'm hoping this pilot thing will work out, and that's not including, of course, that I might find myself spending way more if the journal articles they say I have to take out end up costing close or way more than the $1500 in lost revenue!

 

[alina_s]

But the way I'm seeing it now, if I had to do an article a month, this is a great way to reinforce keeping up to date with the future of psychiatry instead of the past. Most doctors I know don't regularly read up on journals. I think the better doctors keep up with them. It's refreshing to see people on top of the current data instead of keeping with practices years old if not decades old.

Also it gives me a pace to accomplish these tasks at my own pace instead of taking a day off that will cost me pretty much over $1500 in gross revenue and that's just for taking the exam itself. E.g. I'm waiting at the oil change place, I can likely get one done.

I like it for those reasons too. However, I have to do the general plus child and adolescent recertifications, and if it's really 30 articles each every 3 years, that's a lot of work on top of 50 CME units per year.

 

[whopper]

I don't know if the pilot program is available for C&A or other psychiatric board certifications. I can tell you that AAPL was supposed to have provided some SA-CME material for the newer CME format and for over a year they didn't provide it. I even called AAPL and asked them what was up with it cause I wanted to do their SA-CMEs and they apologized and told me he wasn't available yet. I don't know if they've since then gotten it finished.

So for someone to come up with a pilot for forensic psychiatry-I don't see it happening because thoroughly going over articles is going to be a lot of work, and if it took them over a year to get a SA-CME off the ground (if it ever did), I'm not expecting much. Another thing-the forensic psych board exam IMHO had terrible questions. It's had phrasology and rhetoric specific to 1 psych textbook that aren't accepted by the majority of psychiatry. E.g. "Rape syndrome," is used almost synonymously to PTSD in a specifc forensic psych textbook and it's really because of the author had the egocentrism to do so. It's not a generally accepted term even among forensic psychiatrists yet it was in the board exam on several questions showing they got their questions out of that 1 book and not seeming to care that this really is an inappropriate term.

It's not fair or valid IMHO to test people on something that's not officiated into the medical lexicon, not part of the AAPL review course, and only from 1 guy's textbook and only he seemingly uses it in that context. I literally asked some of the top forensic psychiatrists, and general psychiatrists in the field about the term and they were like, "I never heard of it."

It'd be like me putting questions into the general psych board exam for Loser Personality Disorder as a synonym for Learned Helplessness with the people taking the test having no warning about this term.

 

[ask1288]

Guys / Gals... So i signed up for the pilot and have started taking these tests... If anyone wants to collaborate, please PM me... or text my cell is 484-664-0278. Thx!

 

[PikminOC]

Guys / Gals... So i signed up for the pilot and have started taking these tests... If anyone wants to collaborate, please PM me... or text my cell is 484-664-0278. Thx!

How's it going?

 

[PikminOC]

I don't know if the pilot program is available for C&A or other psychiatric board certifications. I can tell you that AAPL was supposed to have provided some SA-CME material for the newer CME format and for over a year they didn't provide it. I even called AAPL and asked them what was up with it cause I wanted to do their SA-CMEs and they apologized and told me he wasn't available yet. I don't know if they've since then gotten it finished.

So for someone to come up with a pilot for forensic psychiatry-I don't see it happening because thoroughly going over articles is going to be a lot of work, and if it took them over a year to get a SA-CME off the ground (if it ever did), I'm not expecting much. Another thing-the forensic psych board exam IMHO had terrible questions. It's had phrasology and rhetoric specific to 1 psych textbook that aren't accepted by the majority of psychiatry. E.g. "Rape syndrome," is used almost synonymously to PTSD in a specifc forensic psych textbook and it's really because of the author had the egocentrism to do so. It's not a generally accepted term even among forensic psychiatrists yet it was in the board exam on several questions showing they got their questions out of that 1 book and not seeming to care that this really is an inappropriate term.

It's not fair or valid IMHO to test people on something that's not officiated into the medical lexicon, not part of the AAPL review course, and only from 1 guy's textbook and only he seemingly uses it in that context. I literally asked some of the top forensic psychiatrists, and general psychiatrists in the field about the term and they were like, "I never heard of it."

It'd be like me putting questions into the general psych board exam for Loser Personality Disorder as a synonym for Learned Helplessness with the people taking the test having no warning about this term.

It's their playground. They do what they want

 

[ACCCMD]

If anyone wants to collaborate on the pilot articles I would welcome that - I am just getting started - my email is [email protected]

 

[Psych19]

So I guess the ABPN has received approval from ABMS to make completion of articles a permanent alternative to taking a recert exam every 10 years.

The Article Assessment Pathway is certainly appealing to me in that I would probably learn more clinically useful and practical information from reading these curated articles, than by taking a recert test full of obscure and clinically irrelevant questions. Folks above seem to believe the articles are overall well-chosen and interesting. But compared to taking the recert exam, this pathway seems pretty onerous, at least the way they've designed it...

I'm not due to take the recert exam until 2028. I'll be going for a recert in two certificates, which I guess means I need to complete 50 articles in a 3-year period. Am I reading this correct that the alternative pathway is to read 50 articles every three years, rather than just 50 articles during the 3-year period that overlaps with when the recert exam is due?

In a 9-year period that's at least 150 articles, or 750 questions (vs. just taking a recert exam with just a couple hundred questions every 10 years, which has a pass rate in the high 90s).

That seems like a raw deal.

 

[futuredo32]

Where does one find these articles?

 

[clausewitz2]

So I guess the ABPN has received approval from ABMS to make completion of articles a permanent alternative to taking a recert exam every 10 years.

The Article Assessment Pathway is certainly appealing to me in that I would probably learn more clinically useful and practical information from reading these curated articles, than by taking a recert test full of obscure and clinically irrelevant questions. Folks above seem to believe the articles are overall well-chosen and interesting. But compared to taking the recert exam, this pathway seems pretty onerous, at least the way they've designed it...

I'm not due to take the recert exam until 2028. I'll be going for a recert in two certificates, which I guess means I need to complete 50 articles in a 3-year period. Am I reading this correct that the alternative pathway is to read 50 articles every three years, rather than just 50 articles during the 3-year period that overlaps with when the recert exam is due?

In a 9-year period that's at least 150 articles, or 750 questions (vs. just taking a recert exam with just a couple hundred questions every 10 years, which has a pass rate in the high 90s).

That seems like a raw deal.

It obviously is a bit more work than a recert exam, but at the same time, this is essentially asking you to read slightly less than one and a half articles per month. this seems like a very doable pace (and with any luck those articles are actually useful sometimes).

 

[comp1]

I did the pilot. Most the articles were okay, you get them from a list the ABPN providers. The questions, however, were so poorly and confusingly written. They seemed more geared to making sure you didn't skim than that you actually took in any clinically useful information. I get how it might be preferable to do the test.

 

[nithome]

looking for collaboration to work on MOC articles -email [email protected]