The American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery (ABOS) has long worked to establish standards for the education of orthopaedic surgeons. As part of its mission, the organization has launched the ABOS Knowledge, Skills, and Behavior (ABOS KSB) Program. Residents at all Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredited Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Education Programs who plan on participating in the ABOS Board Certification process are required to participate in the ABOS KSB Program along with meeting the education requirements.
The program includes three areas of assessment to evaluate resident competence:
- Orthopaedic Knowledge: The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ Orthopaedic In-Training Examination is the yearly resident knowledge measure that has been chosen by the ABOS. The AAOS OITE and ABOS Part I Examination share the same blueprint and. are roughly linked.
- Surgical Skills: Residents request an assessment that allows the evaluation of their surgical skills on a particular case from faculty and then receive real-time feedback.
- Professional Behavior: Residents request a professional behavior assessment from faculty at the end of each rotation.
- The ABOS KSB Program also includes a yearly 360 professional behavior assessment that residency programs can use.
In partnership with the ACGME, the ABOS KSB+ app and web portal allow residents to enter cases into one system that allows them to request surgical skills assessments for the ABOS as well as have the cases transferred to the ACGME to be recorded in their procedure log system.
