Volunteer Spotlight – IR: There’s No Question He’s Streamlining the Process
By ABR Associate Director of Communications Rodney Campbell
October 2026;19(5):9
Serving as a volunteer on an ABR question-writing committee takes time and effort. Members are required to develop a minimum number of items each year, some of which never appear on exams or assessments because they don’t make it past the review process.
Coming up with relevant questions can be a challenge. That’s why Nicholas Fidelman, MD, is adopting a template process for the members of his Interventional Radiology/Diagnostic Radiology Certifying Exam Committee, giving them a head start on submitting content.
“When we use the templated questions, things become a lot easier and smoother during the discussion process,” said Dr. Fidelman, who became committee chair last year. “All that we have to review is clinical history, the images, image labels, and maybe a little bit of a minor modification of the template as it pertains to an individual case.”
Dr. Fidelman’s templates include many of the basics that are needed for question development: procedure options, steps, complications, and alternatives. Writers then fill in specific information, including clinical history, pertinent data, imaging, and labels.
Having a format in place helps committee members write questions and streamlines the process when they get together to review their proposed content.
“It makes the discussion more focused and a lot shorter,” Dr. Fidelman said. “We can get through more questions during a single meeting.”
ABR exam questions and OLA content go through multiple reviews before entering the pool of available questions. The last stop for Dr. Fidelman’s committee submissions includes discussion with Darryl Zuckerman, MD, an ABR Trustee who once held what is now Dr. Fidelman’s committee chair spot.
“We just performed our review and identified three questions that raised concerns for clarity,” Dr. Fidelman said. “We replaced two of them with similar questions from the bank to make sure that the questions were more clear.”
Having a question bank is crucial for every committee. During his team’s recent meeting in Chicago, Dr. Fidelman was thinking about streamlining upcoming certifying exam content.
“I was taking diligent notes on the cases that would be good for template development,” he said. “What I would like to do is get 30 or even 40 cases converted into new templates for us to use in the future.”
Committees don’t want unusual cases for exams. The goal is to determine who’s qualified to safely treat patients, not to serve as a gauge of physicians who have encountered rare scenarios. That’s one of the reasons items go through a detailed vetting process.
“These are not meant to be difficult questions,” Dr. Fidelman said. “These are bread and butter clinical scenarios that will be encountered in daily practice.”
Dr. Zuckerman said his colleague was well-prepared to take over as chair.
“He fit in so well that when I stepped down, Nick was a natural choice to fill that role,” Dr. Zuckerman said. “He has done a great job in that position and we’re lucky to have him as a volunteer.”
Dr. Fidelman is director of interventional oncology and a clinical professor for University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Health. When he entered medical school at UCSF, he planned to pursue surgery. That all changed in his third year when he saw an interventional radiologist perform a biliary drain on a patient with an infection.
“That was fascinating,” he said. “I kept that interest and signed up for a month-long elective for interventional radiology during the beginning of my fourth year.”
He had another opportunity to extend his skills as a resident at USCF. During Dr. Fidelman’s second year, a fellow dropped out of the program, opening the door for a temporary replacement.
“It was kind of a mini-fellowship experience,” he said. “It was very interesting, educational, and inspiring and only reinforced my career choice at that point.”
Dr. Fidelman’s specialty is the treatment of neuroendocrine tumors. His patients can live for decades with their disease and often need multiple treatments repeated over a course of years.
Those patients often see him more than they visit their primary care physicians. It’s a responsibility and opportunity to provide that treatment.
“You’re really on the frontline and these patients and families trust you very much with healthcare decisions,” Dr. Fidelman said. “It’s incredibly rewarding and gratifying to be able to provide this kind of longitudinal care in addition to the episodic clinical care that we typically provide.”
