The Insanity of Doctor Recertification

Ayear ending in a six is moving swiftly past us, and that can only mean one thing to a swath of the folks who carry stethoscopes in their pockets and happen to have finished their residency in a similarly numbered year—it's the decennial requirement to prove your worthiness as a physician.
When I completed my residency training in 1996, I crammed for the better part of a year and took the board exams that labeled me “board certified” by the American Board of Internal Medicine, the certifying board for internists. While board certification in one's field of specialty is not technically required in order to hang out a shingle in the United States—only a state medical license is needed—in practice, a doctor cannot get a decent job without it.
 

 
Board certification launched in 1936 with one single octopus of a test that you wrestled down at the end of your residency. If you survived, you were then dispatched into practice and never had to look back. In 1990, however, a monumental change occurred: Board certification would no longer be a one-time event (except for the lucky pre-1990 cohort that was grandfathered in). Doctors would now have to retake the test every 10 years. And during the decade interim between tests, doctors would have to complete a certain number of educational credits in order to prove they were keeping up with the new knowledge.