ABO Update
Dr. Jeryl D. English
The new ABO process promotes early certification (immediately following graduation from a graduate orthodontic program) followed by periodic reexamination. The new certification process will go into effect in 2007 and will be applied to the orthodontic residents/students who are graduating in that year. The Board of Directors took many factors into account while developing the new approach to certification. For example, many practicing orthodontists are currently board eligible (having passed the Written Examination). To address their situation, the Board has approved two different approaches toward certification for these individuals. One approach, the Gateway Offer, is a totally new concept that relies heavily on the reexamination process. The second approach is the more traditional pathway. However, practicing orthodontists may only take advantage of the Gateway Offer until July 1, 2007. The traditional options will only be available until February 2008. After that point in time, the ABO will focus on early certification followed by periodic reexamination.
In 2007, graduating orthodontic residents and students in ADA accredited specialty programs will take the Written Exam. After successful completion of this exam and graduation from their orthodontic programs, the new graduates may then take the Initial Certification Exam. This exam will involve the presentation of cases treated in residency programs and will be evaluated according to ABO standards. The recent graduate must have initiated and completed treatment of the presented cases. A 10-year time-limited certificate will be issued upon successful completion of the Written Exam and the Initial Certification Exam. When the 10-year certificate expires, boarded orthodontists must successfully complete the First Recertification Exam to maintain their certification.
Statistics as of December 31, 2006
| Diplomates | Candidates | |||
| Active | 3,084 | Board Applicants | 580 | |
| Retired | 808 | Board Eligible | 1,599 | |
| Total | 3,892 | Total | 2,179 |
The 2007 Clinical Examination will be held February 23-27 in St. Louis. The board has invited 20 new examiners to train for future exams when there may be as many as 900 examinees per year. The 2007 ABO Written Examination will be given again from April 9-13, 2007 at Pearson Centers.
2006 ABO Written Exam
The written examination was given twice in 2006, in April and December at Pearson Centers nationwide. There were a combined total of 637 candidates who took the Written Examination in 2006. There were 576 candidates who successfully passed the examination, and there were 61 failures. This is approximately a 90% pass rate.
The ABO began giving computerized written examinations at Pearson Centers nationwide. The AAO supports this change and a student poll showed 2 to 1 that students would prefer a computerized exam near their hometown. It is noteworthy that nearly all of the 23 medical boards, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing and three dental boards are using Pearson Centers for computerized examinations.
Offering the exams at Pearson Centers has relieved our security concerns as questions are scrambled to discourage candidates from remembering a particular question or group of questions. Studies show that it is harder to remember questions from a computer screen than from a paper/pencil exam. Other forms of cheating during the exam were virtually eliminated. The transition to computerized testing should facilitate utilization of the Written Examination as an outcomes measure for graduate orthodontic programs. The salient reason is that the exam will be given in early April and can be graded rapidly. The program directors can therefore obtain scores promptly for reference to the graduating classes before they graduate/depart from the program.
Question Bank
The success of the written examination will depend on educators' continued input to the ABO Question Bank. The address of the website is www.americanboardortho.com/q_submit. In this past year, only 200 questions were submitted; this is a significant decrease from the previous year. Many required significant modification, and therefore the members of the ABO Written Examination Committee have published an article in the AJO-DO entitled, "A Guide to Writing ABO Test Items," (Sept. 2005, Vol. 128, No, 3, pp. 397-401) as a guideline for question construction. Our intent is to standardize the question format and insure adequate references for those questions submitted.