LA-PMR
The Future of Certification: Relevance, Value, Continuous Improvement
Recall, if you will, when you first received the news that you passed the ABPMR Part II Examination – after years of training and preparation, you were finally board certified! You applied everything you learned and practiced in training to a two-part certification process with your peers, demonstrating you met the board’s standard of knowledge and skill requisite for board-certified physiatrists.
Now imagine a continuing certification process that builds on that training and allows you to flourish in a real-world physiatric practice. This continuing certification program uses the most sophisticated adult learning methods, allows you to customize your education and assessments to your needs, has real-time analysis of knowledge gaps, and provides tools and resources for improvement by drawing on the latest literature. Not only that, but the requirements dovetail with what you’re already doing in practice and nearly seamlessly integrate into your busy schedule.
With Longitudinal Assessment for PM&R (LA-PM&R) as a starting point in 2020, we’ll already be halfway there.
By now, you’ve read how longitudinal assessment (LA) differs from exams, the evolution of time-limited certification, whether and how to study for LA, and the purpose of LA in the context of your practice. Because LA-PM&R incorporates customization, proven adult learning methods, and knowledge gap analysis, we invite you to imagine the future of certification with us.
Ultimately, this is where we’re going, because the ABPMR’s mission of serving the public can only be achieved by supporting board certified physiatrists’ efforts to continually learn and improve over a lifetime of practice. That’s why we began this process of MOC innovation and improvement, and why we’ll continue improving it over time.
How will we work to improve it? In addition to the development of questions on key articles in the next two to three years, the ABPMR has plans to integrate other elements of MOC into the program, tie specific improvement project topics to your interests, suggest educational products or topics based on performance or preference, and help you understand all the different ways you could optimize LA-PM&R for you, including (for example) choosing certain years to get more questions in areas in which you practice infrequently in the interest of shoring up your foundational PM&R knowledge.
In short, we see LA-PM&R as a platform from which to launch a relevant and meaningful certification program in which you’ll find increasing value to your practice. Because we know you’re always working to become a better doctor for your patients — so we’re designing a continuing certification program to be one of the most important tools you use to get there.
Questions? As always, just contact us.
