News
Discover inspiring stories from our volunteers, candidates, and community, and stay up to date with important news and announcements on exams, policies, and more.
ABR Looking for Feedback on Residency Service-Time Requirement
The ABR is seeking input from stakeholders regarding minimum requirements for time served during residency while avoiding an extension of training to be considered board eligible. We are actively seeking comment now so that we may develop a reasonable plan before July 1 to comply with an ABMS requirement announced last year to clearly state these requirements in our policies. Extreme scenarios might…
Future Residents Make Match Day Memories
This is a long-awaited time for aspiring medical residents. Match Week 2021 kicked off Monday when future residents learned whether they had a match. Those who did will find out Friday where they will be spending their residencies. The process begins in the fall during the final year of medical school, when residents apply to…
Anxiety, Joy, Relief: Resident Matching Program Delivers Range of Emotions
By Hala Mazin, MD I grew up thinking the most memorable moment in my life might be the day I got married or when I saw my child for the first time. I never imagined it would come in an email from the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). It was an email I had worked…
Board Drops ‘Conditioning’ Status for Core Exam
The ABR Board decided last week, effective for 2021 and beyond, to eliminate the “conditioning” result for candidates who passed the overall Core Exam but did not meet the specific passing threshold for physics. In recent years, this has affected less than 1% of candidates. This change aligns the scoring model for physics with the clinical and modality portions of…
Ten Things Young Medical Physicists Should Do to Kick-Start Their Careers
By Raghavendiran Boopathy, PhD; Malcolm Heard, PhD; and James A Tanyi, PhD In our professional lives, we all have had moments where we wished we had done things or approached problems differently. In writing this article, our purpose is to give a perspective for the future generation looking to make an impact in medical physics….
Experienced AEDs Fill Important Roles as Staff
They have decades of combined experience in their fields. They have spent years as ABR volunteers, working on committees and as oral examiners. Now, they are part-time staff who serve as associate executive directors (AEDs), helping connect the ABR with its many stakeholders. Paul Wallner, DO, is the AED with most tenure, having held the…
ABR Trustee Seeing COVID’s Impacts at Home
By Catheryn Yashar, MD My healthy husband’s first cough was March 9, 2020. Thankfully, he has nearly recovered. That day he was worried, so he wandered down to the ER and was reassured the virus “isn’t here yet.” He called in sick the next day. Five days later, he was either sleeping or coughing. Meals…
Four Ways to Make the Most of Your Radiology Residency
By Hala Mazin, MD The resident match is one of the most exciting times in your medical school career. It is what you have been working so hard to reach for the last four years! This virtual match season poses new challenges; it may be difficult to decipher your best fit and which program will…
Survey Respondents Give OLA 4.1 Rating
Online Longitudinal Assessment (OLA) has been around for two years, including an entire year when diplomates from all four specialties participated. With more than 3.5 million answers submitted, many participants say it has been an effective way of satisfying Part 3 of Maintenance of Certification. More than 6,000 diplomates participated in a recent survey in…
Diplomate: OLA Provides Real-World Way of Learning
By Summer Kaplan, MD Part of the ABR’s Maintenance of Certification (MOC) process, Online Longitudinal Assessment (OLA) is a step forward for our profession. OLA aligns our board requirements with how radiologists currently learn: online and in real time. Maintaining updated knowledge is core to our jobs as radiologists. It takes effort to maintain the…
Diplomate: Trust the Science and Take the COVID-19 Vaccine
By Leah Braswell, MD “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” –Coretta Scott King Growing up, nearly everyone in our small town got their vaccines at my dad’s clinic. A self-described “country” doctor, Dad brought pig hearts to our classes to teach anatomy, responded to playground…
New RSNA President Optimistic Despite 2021 Uncertainty
When Mary Mahoney, MD, discusses her plans for 2021 as the new Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) president, she says things are “up in the air.” Interestingly, that’s one place she won’t spend much time this year despite the organization’s global reach. COVID-19, of course, is to blame. With in-person meetings shut down across…