Range 30-56% based on the limited data they've been shamed into releasing. Most likely 40-45%. I would say that qualifies as "nearly 50%"
Not sure why this 50% threshold is so important when the historical fail rates are around 10% with small variance. Maybe just so the leadership can brush it off as "the majority of your peers passed, so shut up."
The TLDR of the story is that the ABR published an incendiary opinion earlier this year (see excerpt below) that resident quality was decreasing and teaching at small programs was questionable (without any evidence, in fact evidence to the contrary), designed an absurd exam written by leaders of large programs and ultimately approved by the author of the aforementioned incendiary opinion, and produced results that supported their original conclusion that small programs suck and need to be shut down.
Before the exam was administered was written:
"most postgraduate training programs have six or fewer trainees and small faculties. In fact, most RO programs possess neither the resources nor the faculty depth and breadth described as part of the authors’ departments. One of us (PEW) served as a faculty advisor for the Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology (ARRO) for six years and became keenly aware of the lack of didactic programming and schooled educators in many of our training programs. Numerous faculty members in these small departments are committed almost full-time to clinical activities, with postgraduate trainee education seen as merely an adjunct to these clinical activities."
They have sense sent nonsense opinions and letters referencing the inferior results from programs with "6 or fewer residents." So, PEW (Paul Wallner, DO), was "keenly aware" of this problem (hint: it's not a problem -- the real problem is over-emphasizing physics and molecular bio minutiae over clinical education) despite consistent board exam results over the past DECADE. Then after publishing this, the man with absolute power over the test writes an opinion that the increased failures were due mainly to poor results from small programs using the results of the test THAT HE PRODUCED.
No need for multiple threads about this. Go to the rad onc forum and read the physics & radbio thread if you want to see how this scandal and blatant abuse of power went down.
