Doctors face retesting in specialty areas

April 06, 2010|Associated Press

ATLANTA — For the first time since leaving medical school, many doctors are having to take tests to renew board certification in their fields, 147 specialties from dermatology to obstetrics.

Any doctor can deliver a baby, treat cancer, or advertise as a cardiologist. Certification means the doctor had special training in that field and passed an exam to prove knowledge of it.

Doctors used to passed exams and be certified for life, but that changed in the 1990s. Doctors certified since then must retest every 6 to 10 years to prove their skills haven’t gone stale.

For some specialists, like the doctors who push tubes into heart arteries to unclog blockages, this is the first year many are going through retesting.

Older doctors also are feeling the heat. More than a quarter of a million of them were “grandfathered’’ with lifetime certificates, but are being urged to retest voluntarily to show they still know their stuff.

Most don’t want to do this. One who isn’t grumbling is Dr. Stephen Mester, 52, a cardiologist at Brandon Regional Hospital in Brandon, Fla.

“I am choosing to renew. It’s just an opportunity to maintain my skills and confirm to myself that I can do what I’ve been trained to do,’’ he said. “Most of what I do today didn’t exist, and some of it [was] not even thought of, when I was in medical school.’’