Maintenance and Assessment of Skills and Knowledge Over the Career Continuum

From the time of initial incorporation of the of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) in 1933, through the early 1990s, diplomates of 23 of its 24 member boards understood that their initial certification awards extended throughout the continuum of their careers. From the time of its founding in 1969, only the American Board of Family Medicine required continuous certification. As early as the post–World War II era, the appropriateness of this “once and done” certification process was questioned by medical educators, and more recently by legislators, regulators, and the public. To meet the demands of rapidly changing scientific and clinical advances, and to maintain the values accrued by hard-fought self-regulation, the ABMS and its member boards agreed to implement programs that required continuous elements of professionalism, attainment, and assessment of current medical skills and knowledge and elements of practice improvement, throughout the career of each certified physician. Each of the medical specialty boards was provided some flexibility to determine specifics of their program within the general framework of the ABMS core competencies and four defined maintenance of certification (MOC) foundational parts. Herein, we describe the programs in general and more specifically, as they relate to the field of radiation oncology.