Longtime Volunteer Ready for New Duties
By Rodney Campbell, ABR Communications Manager
2024;18(4):8
After 17 years as an ABR volunteer, Will Breeden, MS, wasn’t ready to stop contributing when his term as a committee chair was recently set to end.
He had spent all his volunteer time working on Continuing Certification committees, including the past five years as the Online Longitudinal Assessment (OLA) Nuclear Medicine Physics Chair. Even with those duties coming to a close, he wanted to keep contributing.
“I still wanted to be active with the ABR,” Will said. “I feel like I’ve been doing it almost my whole career. I would feel lost if I weren’t doing something with the ABR.”
The ABR was equally motivated to keep him on board. The good news is that both sides got what they wanted when Will moved to an oral exam question writing committee in January, ensuring that a tenured and knowledgeable volunteer wouldn’t be going away.
Will was taking on a different kind of work, as a volunteer involved in the medical physics Initial Certification process. Same goal – creating questions that prove nuclear medical physicists are qualified for their duties – different audience. From experienced diplomates to less-seasoned candidates.
“I really welcomed it because it was a breath of fresh air,” he said. “It’s a totally different thought process of how you create a question and what we’re looking for in an oral exam question.”
His experience writing “walking-around knowledge” questions for OLA participants has helped. He’s also been an oral examiner, so he knows the candidate audience.
“You’re trying to determine whether your question fits for oral initial certification,” Will said. “Does the candidate have enough knowledge to be able to function clinically at a certain level of competence that the board has come to expect?”
As is the case with most ABR volunteers who write OLA and exam questions, Will has always found inspiration at work. He’s a diagnostic radiological and medical nuclear physicist and radiation safety officer at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis. He often finds potential questions in his everyday activities, giving OLA and Initial Certification exams a real-life connection.
“I’ll make a little note and jot it down on my phone, ‘Hey, this could be a good question, or this could be good for OLA,’” he said.
Will has found that serving as a volunteer has helped him professionally. Getting together with other subject-matter experts from his field is often an educational experience.
“There are so many smart and talented medical physicists who volunteer,” he said. “When we sit down for a session, whether we’re approving the questions for next year’s OLA or writing questions, I usually learn something or I look at things from a different perspective.”
Former ABR Trustee Robert Pooley, MD, worked with Will when he was on the Continuing Certification committee. Dr. Pooley, a medical physicist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, has high praise for his colleague.
“Will Breeden is one of the most dedicated ABR volunteers with whom I have worked,” Dr. Pooley said. “He has always made himself available to ABR staff and Trustees, taking care of committee work quickly and efficiently, and ensuring smooth operations. He was asked on many occasions to assist with additional projects related to Continuing Certification and he always participated, contributing his expert knowledge and advice to improve the ABR’s nuclear medical physics work.”
As one of more than 1,300 ABR volunteers, Will plays a pivotal role in serving his field and patients. He and his colleagues’ contributions of time and expertise make the Initial and Continuing Certification processes for medical physics and the ABR’s other three specialties fair and relevant. He’s done it long enough to know.
“The level of detail and the amount of effort that goes into making the whole certification process from start to finish meaningful and worthwhile for the profession is important,” he said. “There’s no way it happens without the combination of the ABR staff and the physics community in a volunteer capacity.”
