Board of Trustees to Welcome Three Members After Fall Meeting
2024;17(2):11
The American Board of Radiology is adding three members to its Board of Trustees: Kristopher Cummings, MD, a cardiothoracic imaging radiologist; Umesh D. Oza, MD, a nuclear radiologist; and Jennifer Stickel, PhD, a nuclear medical physicist. They will begin their duties at the conclusion of the fall board meeting in September.
Dr. Cummings is chair of the division of cardiothoracic imaging in the department of radiology at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, and an associate professor of radiology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Alabama and medical degree at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham. He completed his residency and a fellowship in cardiothoracic imaging at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Dr. Cummings has been certified by the ABR since 2007.
Dr. Oza is a partner at American Radiology Associates in Dallas and professor of radiology at Baylor University Medical Center. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at Texas A&M University and his medical degree at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. Dr. Oza finished a residency in diagnostic radiology at Tufts University School of Medicine/New England Medical Center in Boston and a fellowship in nuclear medicine at Harvard Medical School. He has been certified by the ABR since 2004.
Dr. Stickel is vice president of diagnostic/nuclear medicine physics at Colorado Associates in Medical Physics in Colorado Springs. She completed her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering at Boston University and her PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of California-Davis. Dr. Stickel has been certified by the ABR since 2010.
The Board of Trustees advances the quality, relevance, and effectiveness of the ABR’s assessments for certification. The Board of Trustees makes recommendations to the Board of Governors regarding assessment structure including, but not limited to, exam format, content, assembly, delivery, scoring, and feedback. Trustees have specialty and subspecialty expertise, reflecting major areas of clinical practice.
ABMS Visiting Scholars Program Application Period Opens
2024;17(2):12
The ABR partners with the American Board of Medical Specialties to assist candidates and early career diplomates with their research efforts and leadership development through the Visiting Scholars program.
A one-year, part-time program, ABMS Visiting Scholars facilitates research projects that address pressing health care issues and research priorities for the Member Board community. Applications for the 2024-’25 cohort will be accepted until June 17.
The ABR’s goal is to fund up to four projects each year, preferably with one participant from each of the four specialties that it certifies: diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology, medical physics, and radiation oncology.
For more information, please visit the ABMS’ website or watch this video.
ABR Board of Governors and Trustees
2024;17(2):13
The current ABR Board of Governors and Trustees consists of the following volunteers: Back row, L to R: Andrea K. Ng, MD, MPH; Steven J. Frank, MD; Desiree E. Morgan, MD; Leslie Scoutt, MD; Stephen F. Simoneaux, MD; Catheryn Yashar, MD; David B. Larson, MD, MBA; Daniel C. Davis, MD; John A Kaufman, MD, MS; Christopher P. Wood, MD; Toby A. Gordon, ScD; John H. Suh, MD; Kate Maturen, MD, MS; Paul J. Rochon, MD. Front row, L to R: Robert A. Pooley, PhD; Anne M. Covey, MD; Sanjeev Bhalla, MD; M. Victoria Marx, MD; Matthew B. Podgorsak, PhD; Robert M. Barr, MD; Cheri L. Canon, MD; Kalpana M. Kanal, PhD; Marina I. Feldman, MD, MBA; Ashok Gupta, MD; M. Elizabeth Oates, MD. Not pictured: Donald J. Flemming, MD; Pamela A. Propeck, MD; Brian J. Davis, MD, PhD.
Kaufman Named President-elect for Board of Governors
By Rodney Campbell, ABR Communications Manager
2024;17(2):7
Interventional radiologist John A. Kaufman, MD, MS, has been named president-elect of the ABR Board of Governors. Dr. Kaufman will begin serving as president-elect at the end of the fall board meeting in September, when Cheri L. Canon, MD, starts her two-year team as board president. In this video, Dr. Kaufman shares his thoughts on what makes a good ABR president.
Dr. Kaufman has more than 30 years of experience in his field. He holds the Frederick S. Keller endowed professorship at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland and continues clinical practice. Dr. Kaufman was the inaugural chair of the Dotter Department of Interventional Radiology and director of the Dotter Interventional Institute at OHSU.
Throughout his career, Dr. Kaufman’s research has focused on vena cava filters. More recently, he has been studying venous diseases. In 2010, he earned a master’s degree in healthcare management from the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard.
He earned his MD from the Boston University School of Medicine in 1982 and interned at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Then, he finished a residency at Boston University/Boston City Hospital. He later became chief resident in radiology and performed a fellowship in vascular and interventional radiology there.
Dr. Kaufman has been active in the American Heart Association, American College of Radiology, American Roentgen Ray Society, and Radiological Society of North America. A longtime fellow of the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR), Dr. Kaufman has served as SIR president and SIR Foundation chair. Both SIR and the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology Society of Europe (CIRSE) have awarded him gold medals.
Complex Question Development Process Limits Number of Exam Administrations Per Year
By Kalpana M. Kanal, PhD, ABR Trustee; Brian J. Davis, MD, PhD, ABR Trustee; and Brent Wagner, MD, MBA, ABR Executive Director
2024;17(2):3
Since 2021, the ABR has offered two exam administrations annually for the oral certifying exams in medical physics, radiation oncology, and interventional radiology. This has been possible because of the transition, partly in response to the pandemic, to a videoconference platform in place of the previous in-person model. The primary reason for the change to multiple administrations was to protect against unexpected life events, such as personal illness or family issues, interfering with a candidate’s ability to sit for an exam.
Frequently we are asked why most of our computer-based exams (CBEs) are offered only once each year. The ABR has considered multiple offerings for qualifying exams in medical physics and radiation oncology, for the certifying exam in diagnostic radiology, and for subspecialty exams in neuroradiology, nuclear radiology, and pediatric radiology. However, there are practical considerations that make this difficult.
CBEs require more content than oral exams. As shown in this figure depicting the lifecycle of an item, the development of written exam questions that are psychometrically valid, high quality, and relevant to the discipline represents a complex process. The process starts with the efforts of an individual committee volunteer, who drafts the question with corresponding high-quality anonymized images, if appropriate. The material is uploaded into ABR-developed software that allows for curation, indexing, and queuing of the questions. ABR staff, including specialists in imaging, editing, and exam development, prepare each question for subsequent online sharing with the item-writing committee. Iterative review and committee approval during several item review calls in the writing cycle is followed by tentative assignment to an exam.
A subsequent exam assembly process is necessary and includes several features. The exam must adhere to specifications of a defined blueprint intended to cover the specific domain in a balanced distribution of important concepts. The process involves coordinating the efforts of ABR staff who assist in exam assembly with volunteer subject matter experts who are ABR diplomates. This step often involves debate and discussion among the test assembly participants to mitigate potential ambiguity in the questions and to identify and remove misleading features of the questions that might be viewed as a “trick.” After the content is approved, several steps remain to upload the questions into the exam software for final review and distribution.
Valid content requires knowledgeable volunteers and some level of security related to the exposure of content. Multiple administrations of the same exam each year, for example, would erode the credibility of ABR testing because widespread knowledge of the questions would affect the validity of the instrument as a measure of knowledge and skill of the examinee, especially for candidates on their second or third attempt at the same exam. Offering a different exam, even twice a year, would be very challenging because the process requires extensive resources for the development of each new question.
Notwithstanding the above, a minority of exam questions are deliberately reused for psychometric analysis. This small cohort of questions, which may be repeated one or several times over the course of many years, is reviewed by volunteer subject matter experts prior to each exam administration to confirm that they are not based on obsolete concepts or practice.
The ABR strives to deliver high-quality exam content that is relevant, fair, reliable, and unambiguous, while keeping costs at a reasonable level for candidates and diplomates. For computer-based exams, these constraints necessitate adhering to a one exam per year schedule.
