Volunteers Drive the ABR’s Work
By Geoffrey S. Ibbott, PhD, ABR Associate Executive Director for Medical Physics
2025;18(2):6
To candidates for certification and even many diplomates, the ABR might appear to be a black box from which exams, requirements, and rules appear and decisions are handed down. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
While the ABR has almost 100 full-time employees who perform valuable administrative, editorial, and IT functions, much of the work that most directly affects candidates and diplomates is performed by volunteers. Most of the ABR’s approximately 1,300 volunteers are members of committees that prepare, evaluate, and administer exams to more than 4,000 candidates for Initial Certification each year in the four disciplines. They also write and evaluate OLA questions that are distributed to the 37,000 diplomates who are enrolled in Continuing Certification.
Most medical physicists begin their journey to certification by taking the Part 1 General Physics Qualifying Exam. The questions that make up the exam are written by individual members of the Part 1 General Committee. After an editorial review, the questions are reviewed by the committee during several virtual meetings and assembled into a complete exam at an in-person meeting. Each of the exams given to medical physicists every year (including Part 2 Qualifying and Part 3 Oral Certifying) is assembled through essentially the same procedure.
Higher-level decisions about admission requirements, exam administration, and other matters related to candidates and diplomates are made by the Board of Trustees. This group, which includes three medical physicists, is composed entirely of volunteers who generally have served on one or more committees and are senior members of their professions. The exam-development committees are supervised by Trustees who attend many committee meetings and are in close contact with the committee chairs.
Decisions about policy, finances, and future priorities are made by the Board of Governors, who are also volunteers and often have served as Trustees.
Both boards adhere to term limits to ensure that the membership is continually refreshed.
Any diplomate in good standing can become an ABR volunteer. Continuing Certification participation is required, even for diplomates with lifetime certificates. The application process is straightforward: the volunteer link in myABR leads to an application form. Diplomates must confirm their contact information, enter details about their interests in volunteering, identify two people to serve as references, attach a CV, and complete a conflict-of-interest disclosure.
Completed applications are reviewed by the discipline’s associate executive director. Approved diplomates are added to a pool of available volunteers. When vacancies on committees occur, the committee chairs and the corresponding Trustee review the pool of applicants in the discipline and specialty to select replacement members appropriate for the committee. Practice type, geographic location, and gender are also taken into consideration when selecting new volunteers for a committee to ensure a diverse membership.
Each of the 12 medical physics committees (excluding advisory committees) has 10 members, including the chair and associate chair. Terms are three years and may be renewed once, and except in unusual circumstances, volunteers may serve on only one committee at a time. Consequently, the number of vacancies each year is not large.
But for the smaller specialties (diagnostic medical physics and especially nuclear medical physics), the pool of potential volunteers is limited. We sometimes struggle to find qualified volunteers to fill vacancies on the committees of these specialties. If you’ve been certified by the ABR for at least a year* and are looking for a way to contribute to the profession, please consider volunteering.
*The volunteer requirement is one year for medical physics, diagnostic radiology, and interventional radiology. For radiation oncology, volunteers are required to be two years post certification.
