Presentation in honor of the 75th anniversary of the ABR: the future of board certification.

Our privilege as a profession is to self-regulate through board certification, but there are many challenges ahead if we wish to preserve this privilege in the interest of our patients and our profession.

Continuing medical education reform for competency-based education and assessment.

The development of competency-based education and evaluation for residents and practicing physicians by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), respectively, includes the competency of practice-based learning and improvement. Efforts to implement this and the other competencies have been a powerful stimulus for continuing medical education (CME) reform, the goal of which is to improve the outcomes of care. The ABMS member boards and their counterpart specialty societies, members of the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS), have formed dyads to set standards and provide education to that end. Focused on the patient, the report of the Conjoint Committee on Continuing Medical Education contains the recommendations necessary to deliver competency-based continuing education to physicians. To implement them will be a major challenge. The CME community must consider the need to provide CME across the major health professions to address the fact that most care is delivered within systems composed of many health professionals. The use of microsystems as a model for the delivery, study, and validation of this interdisciplinary CME holds great promise.