In 1933, the American Pediatric Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American
Medical Association formed the American Board of Pediatrics for the purpose of examining and
awarding certification to physicians who
have superior knowledge in the field of the diseases of childhood.
The ABP awards certificates in the following areas:
- General Pediatrics
- Adolescent Medicine
- Cardiology
- Critical Care Medicine
- Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics
- Emergency Medicine
- Endocrinology
- Gastroenterology
- Hematology-Oncology
- Infectious Diseases
- Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
- Nephrology
- Pulmonology
- Rheumatology
- Child Abuse Pediatrics
The American Board of Pediatrics also awards certificates in conjunction with other
specialty boards. Those certificates include:
- Hospice and Palliative Medicine
- Medical Toxicology
- Pediatric Transplant Hepatology
- Neurodevelopment Disabilities
- Sleep Medicine
- Sports Medicine
Mission
Advancing child health by certifying pediatricians who meet standards of excellence and are
committed to continuous learning and improvement.
The American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) marked its 60th anniversary in 1993. Because all of
the original board members have long since passed from the scene, no one can comment on the
Board's origin from firsthand experience, as
Chick Koop did so well in his essay on the origins of pediatric surgery. During the first
decade of my association with the ABP, however, I heard stories and bits of history from
original board members and other early "movers"
who were still active in the organization. Written materials were available to me, also,
thanks to Borden Veeder, Bob Lawson, Ed Shaw, the ABP history committee chaired by Larry
Finberg, and others who wrote about the Board.
Over the past few years, an increase in intraoperative and obstetric anaphylactic episodes
has been related to rubber exposure. Individuals at high-risk for sensitization to latex
include health care workers,1,2 rubber industry
professionals,3 and children with spina bifida or congenital urogenital abnormalities who
undergo frequent medical procedures.4,5 However, severe reactions have been observed in
other subjects.6,7 Therefore, identifying patients
at risk for anaphylaxis is essential before performing medical procedures involving rubber
exposure.
Recently, similarities in the protein content between natural rubber and several fruits have
been found. Those proteins are cross-reactive and may cause severe allergic reactions if the
patient comes in contact with rubber products
and eats fruit.
- Received October 27, 1993.
- Accepted March 9, 1994.
ABP Board Certification
Originally established by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the Maintenance
of Certification (MOC) process aims to uphold high standards to enhance patient care,
promote ongoing physician learning, and assess clinicians’
knowledge beyond initial certification. In this way, the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP)
board certification and MOC serve patients, families, and the public through the continuous
education and practice improvement of physicians.
ABP participates in MOC through a four-part process that includes initial board
certification and maintenance of certification, self-assessment, and quality improvement
Continuing education is vital to maintaining your professional standing, measuring quality of
care, and advancing your knowledge. A commitment to lifelong learning helps pediatricians
provide the best possible patient care.
ABP Board Certification Requirements
Applicants for ABP board certification must meet the following requirements in order to take
the General Pediatrics Certifying Examination:
- Graduation from an accredited medical school
- Three years of postgraduate pediatric training in accredited programs, where the
applicant receives general comprehensive pediatric training and takes on progressively
more responsibility in each succeeding year
- Verification of training by pediatric program directors
- Proof of licensure: a valid, current, unrestricted license to practice medicine in one
of the states, districts or territories of the United States or a province of Canada
The General Pediatrics Certifying Examination is administered annually, and the subspecialty
certifying examinations are administered every two years. For information on initial exam
dates and testing centers,
ABP Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Four-Part Structure
The ABP and the 24 certifying boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties
(ABMS) collaborated to create the maintenance of certification (MOC) process. The ABP’s
four-part structure is aligned with the ABMS model of MOC.
- Part 1 — Professional Standing: Pediatricians must hold a valid, unrestricted medical
license.
- Part 2 — Lifelong Learning and Self-Assessment: Pediatricians must assess and build
knowledge in practice-relevant areas through activities developed by the ABP and other
organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics
(AAP).
- Part 3 — Cognitive Expertise/Secure Exam: Pediatricians must pass a secure examination
administered at testing centers for initial certification and MOC.
- Part 4 — Improving Professional Practice: Pediatricians must participate in a range of
ABP-approved quality improvement (QI) projects designed to evaluate and improve quality
of pediatric patient care.
Through this four-part process, the ABP MOC program assesses the six core competencies
established by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for general
pediatrics and pediatric subspecialties.
Pilot Program: Maintenance of Certification Assessment for Pediatrics
MOCA-Peds (Maintenance of Certification Assessment for Pediatrics), a pilot program launched
by ABP in 2017, is a shorter, more frequent assessment of pediatric knowledge with a unique
learning component available on computers
and mobile devices. Registration for this pilot program, now closed, was open to physicians
currently maintaining certification in general pediatrics and taking their exam in 2017.
ACGME Core Competencies: The Foundation of Maintenance of Certification
The ACGME Core Competencies are the foundation of ABP board certification and MOC. They are
recognized as the standard by which all physicians must practice and have been widely
accepted and implemented across all medical education
training programs. The ACGME Core Competencies are defined as:
- Practice-Based Learning and Improvement
- Patient Care and Procedural Skills
- Systems-Based Practice
- Medical Knowledge
- Interpersonal and Communication Skills
- Professionalism
Maintaining Your ABP Board Certification:
The platform works with your schedule, adjusts to your strengths and weaknesses, and provides
information that is relevant to your practice of pediatric medicine. Our program is guided
by the ABP content outline to prepare you
for the General Pediatrics initial and MOC exams and enables you to earn your required AMA
PRA Category 1 Credits and ABP MOC points. Most important, this easy-to-use program is a
solution for lifelong learning that will help
you as you strive to provide optimal care for your pediatric patients.
Authentic Adaptive Learning
Adaptive learning has been proven to result in better retention, deeper knowledge, and higher
test scores. But what is adaptive learning? Why does it help? And how do you tell the
difference between experiences that provide true
adaptive learning, and those that just claim to be?
What is adaptive learning?
Adaptive learning harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to customize an
educational or training experience according to an individual’s needs, goals, and
capabilities.
The hallmarks of adaptive learning include the ability to:
- Provide personalized experiences
- Measure and adjust to a learner’s strengths and weaknesses
- Capture user patterns around engagement, timing, and confidence
- Exercise flexibility based on variations that occur from person to person, but also
those that occur within one individual’s experience
All these elements work together in real time, for a continuously evolving, personalized
experience for each learner — in an authentic adaptive learning platform, no two users will
experience the program in the same way.
What characterizes an authentic adaptive learning experience?
Effectiveness for complex subjects
Adaptive learning is especially effective for complex subjects like medicine. Medical
professionals must be able to synthesize a variety of abstract and concrete information
across many related areas. Their daily clinical practice,
along with the need to maintain certification and prepare for board exams, demands this
skill. For a learning platform to be effective for them, it must have a sophisticated
algorithm to manage the learning process, as well
as a strong base of interconnected knowledge to draw from.
Individual and intrapersonal adaptability
The first step in creating an authentic adaptive learning experience is ensuring flexibility
for differences among learners. Research strongly suggests that classifying learners into
types, as educators have tried in the past,
is virtually impossible. Therefore, it’s more effective for a platform to discern and follow
the complex patterns that learners exhibit, than to build static question banks around
learning types that most users won’t consistently
adhere to.
To account for person-to-person differences, authentic adaptive learning must first learn
about each learner. This is accomplished through a battery of questions, with attention paid
not only to answers, but how the learner arrives
at each answer. How long did it take? Which formats were most successful? Were answers
consistent, or did stability erode over time? How does this learner’s performance compare
with that of others in the cohort? What gaps does
the learner need to fill, in order to meet stated goals?
Now, we go a step further, to account for differences one learner might experience over a
period of time. For example, a learner might be fresher in the morning vs. the evening. She
might be balancing board prep with an especially
a busy time in her practice. He might be using the platform to keep up with recent knowledge
while waiting for his child to finish soccer practice. Outside circumstances like these can
have an effect on cognitive factors such
as concentration and confidence, which affect learning.
The confidence question
Confidence must be carefully balanced to have a positive effect on learning: too little, and
a learner gives up and loses the motivation to exert effort; too much, and a learner
underestimates the work that needs to be done and
loses knowledge. That’s why measuring confidence is a key piece of adaptive learning. This
can be done through both automated evaluation (through AI) and learner-directed assessment
(through self-reflection).
Algorithms gauge confidence through questions, timing, and other factors. However, reflection
is also necessary for learners to understand the shortfall between their knowledge and their
assessment of that knowledge. An authentic
adaptive learning experience will clarify a learners strengths and weaknesses so that the
learner may understand and correct them.
Authentic adaptive learning:
- Continuous assessment of performance and confidence to build knowledge and guard against
memory decay
- Content that was specifically developed to work with the adaptive learning environment,
including board review cases and questions
- Personalized delivery and pacing, enabling learners to focus on areas that need
reinforcement
- Algorithms that are continually refined and improved to monitor and calculate individual
performance over time, creating a richer, more tailored learning experience for each
user
Focus Modules
The Focus Modules with our Internal Medicine Board Review allow you to brush up on your IM
knowledge while earning CME credits and MOC points. Every point you earn for CME also counts
as a point towards MOC. Our Internal Medicine
Board Review modules cover a curated selection of topics that meet CME and MOC requirements,
enabling you to “earn while you learn.”
Internal Medicine CME
Family Medicine CME
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the purpose of the American Board of Pediatrics?
The American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) is a nonprofit organization that sets
standards for certification in pediatrics. This process entails assuring the
public that ABP board-certified pediatricians have completed
an accredited residency training program, have successfully passed a robust
evaluation of pediatric knowledge, and are engaged in maintaining certification
through lifelong learning and quality improvement activities.
The board accomplishes this goal by evaluating pediatricians to ensure continued
competence throughout their careers. Founded in 1933, the ABP is one of the 24
certifying boards of the American Board of Medical
Specialties (ABMS). An ABP certificate is recognized throughout the world as a
credential signifying a high level of physician competence.
At the time of certification, pediatricians are automatically enrolled in a
program to maintain certification. Every five years, they complete a series of
activities designed to ensure that they are staying current
on medical advances and are actively improving the quality of care their
practice or institution provides.
How does ABP evaluate pediatricians?
ABP evaluates pediatricians throughout their careers. First, physicians who have
completed an ACGME-accredited training program in general pediatrics or in a
pediatric subspecialty take an exam to determine whether
they have mastered a strong base of knowledge that equips them to provide a high
standard of care. Passing that initial exam earns certification for the
physician.
Is board certification required for a pediatrician to practice
medicine in the U.S.?
No, board certification is voluntary, but may be required by hospitals, medical
centers, and insurance companies for credentialing. To practice medicine, a
pediatrician (or any physician) must have a medical license
issued by the state or territory in which they work. A medical license sets
minimum competency requirements to diagnose and treat patients.
Board certification declares a physician’s expertise in a specialty, like
pediatrics. Maintaining board certification provides evidence that a doctor is
keeping up with advances in his or her specialty.
More than 110,000 pediatricians in the United States have been certified by the
ABP. A pediatrician must be board-certified to be a fellow of the American
Academy of Pediatrics.
Who governs the ABP and where does its financial support come from?
The ABP is governed by a board of directors, comprising 15 members. There are 10
board-certified pediatricians who work in education, research and clinical
practice. One subboard chair represents the subspecialities.
Two public members are non-physicians knowledgeable about the health and welfare
of children and adolescents. Board members serve 6- or 3-year terms. The ABP
President and Executive Vice President also are members.
Officers, including the board chair, are elected on an annual basis for one-year
terms. The ABP Nominating Committee submits candidates for board membership.
Support for ABP activities come from fees paid by physicians
applying for certification and maintenance of certification. Internally, the
board is run by the President and CEO (currently David G. Nichols, MD, MBA) who
is appointed by the board of directors. His eight-member
senior management team includes experts in such fields as credentialing,
examination development/administration, psychometrics, competency-based
assessment, quality, finance, information technology, and operations.
What is the purpose of the Maintenance of Certification?
The ABP recognizes that certified pediatricians are knowledgeable and motivated
by a desire to provide the best possible care. However, research has uncovered
gaps in the quality of health care delivered to children
and adults. Pediatricians who participate in MOC learn how to measure quality of
care and effectively fill the gaps in their own practice through quality
improvement projects or a practice improvement module (PIM).
In addition, pediatricians who participate in MOC demonstrate advanced knowledge
and a commitment to lifelong learning. In this way, the four-part MOC process
assures the public that pediatricians involved in MOC
are continually demonstrating clinical competence.
The
American Board of Pediatrics
