As part of the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery (ABOS) initial Board Certification process, Candidates must submit a Case List along with their ABOS Part II Application. The Case List must include all surgical cases in which the Candidate functioned as the primary surgeon. The Case List must list surgeries at all hospitals at which they operate, from January through June of the year prior to the ABOS Part Oral II Examination.
The mission of the ABOS is to protect the public and one of the ways the ABOS can do that effectively is through the evaluation of a surgical Case List. There are several reasons why the ABOS requires a Case List:
- Examination: 12 cases from the Case List are selected by the ABOS for the Candidate to present at the ABOS Part II Oral Examination.
- Review: The ABOS reviews the Case List looking for outliers. Case Lists that have outliers will be reviewed further by veteran orthopaedic surgeons and may come before the ABOS Credentials Committee. While a very small percentage of Candidates’ Case Lists require further review, the ABOS believes that Case Lists and Peer Reviews are effective ways to protect the public.
- Case List Feedback: The Candidate receives a report from the ABOS that shows data on the Candidate’s Case List compared to Case Lists submitted by their peers for the last several ABOS Part II Oral Examinations as well as those Case Lists submitted by surgeons practicing in the same subspecialty.
- Self-Evaluation: The Candidate’s compiling of the Case List itself often results in self-reflection on particular cases.
For the 12 Selected Cases, Candidates are required to upload notes, images, and other relevant files which they will present at the ABOS Part II Oral Examination. Oral Examiners use a Scoring Rubric to evaluate each case on 9 scoring facets with a 0-3 score. The ABOS uses the 216 total scores accumulated for each Candidate to determine a final score for the Candidate. Then, those scores are adjusted based on the severity and leniency of their 8 Examiners, the difficulty of each case, and the difficulty of each skill. Finally, the ABOS works with a psychometrician to determine a cut score—Candidates whose score is at or above that cut score become ABOS Board Certified.
The ABOS Part II Oral Examination is designed so that no matter who a Candidate’s Oral Examiners are, it should not impact whether that Candidate is successful. In addition, there is no pre-determined percent of people who will pass or not pass the ABOS Part II Examination. All Candidates can potentially pass.
Candidates who are not successful need to complete a new Case List (and Application) to be eligible to sit for the following year’s ABOS Part II Oral Examination.
