OLA Allows Interventional Radiologists to Align Content With Practice
By James B. Spies, MD, MPH, ABR Associate Executive Director for Interventional Radiology, and John A. Kaufman, MD, MS, ABR President-elect
2024;17(5):7
One of the inherent benefits of ABR’s Online Longitudinal Assessment (OLA) for diagnostic radiology (DR) and interventional radiology/diagnostic radiology (IR/DR) diplomates is the flexibility of the program in allowing individuals to align the content with their practice profile.1 Although the platform cannot accommodate an exact fit for every diplomate (for example, those with highly specialized practices that do not extend across more than one imaging modality), adjustments in content allow an approximation of the relative frequency of subspecialty elements of practice.
To satisfy the Part 3 requirement (“Assessment of Knowledge, Judgment, and Skills”) of ABR’s Continuing Certification program, nearly all IR/DR diplomates use OLA. (Less than 5% choose a point-in-time exam, required every five years.) OLA has both summative (“assessment of learning”) and formative (“assessment for learning”) functions, as described previously in The Beam. Starting in January 2022, those wishing to maintain an IR/DR certificate but preferring not to answer exclusively IR content have been able to select one or two other content areas in diagnostic radiology (in addition to the required 50% of interventional radiology content). If two content areas are selected, each must be 25% of the total.
IR/DR diplomates select only IR content 59% of the time; this has remained unchanged from 2022-2024. The choices of the remaining 41% of IR/DR diplomates include three frequently selected combinations: IR plus (a) general radiology (10%), (b) emergency radiology (4%), or (c) general and emergency radiology (12%). More than 60 other combinations have been selected by IR/DR diplomates. Of the 1,885 IR diplomates who select OLA content outside of IR, 788 (42%) select one area and 1,097 (58%) choose two areas. This voluntary selection by participating diplomates is indicative of a range of practice of interventional radiologists that significantly overlaps with diagnostic radiology.
OLA serves the public by documenting a level of knowledge through an instrument that is psychometrically valid and developed by subject matter experts in the field. As part of the overall Continuing Certification program, OLA serves those who hold ABR certificates by identifying knowledge gaps and providing feedback to enhance a range of clinical skills and practice patterns.
1 Unfortunately, the relatively small populations of radiation oncology and medical physics diplomates prevent the ABR from creating a similar level of specificity in those disciplines.