To become Board Certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery (ABOS), Candidates must perform orthopaedic surgery. As part of the application process for the ABOS Part II Oral Examination (the final step to becoming ABOS Board Certified), Candidates submit a list of all surgical cases performed as a primary surgeon over a 6-month period. The Case List must include at least 35 surgical cases for a surgeon to be eligible to sit for the ABOS Part II Oral Examination. The Candidate presents 12 of these cases to veteran orthopaedic surgeon Oral Examiners at the in-person ABOS Part II Oral Examination.
After passing the ABOS Part II Oral Examination, the orthopaedic surgeon is ABOS Board Certified for a period of 10 years and participates in the ABOS Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Program. One part of this Continuing Certification program is submitting a new surgical Case List for Board evaluation every 10 years. For those orthopaedic surgeons who are no longer performing surgery, they can recertify through the ABOS Non-Operative Pathway. Those physicians still participate in the ABOS MOC Program. With no Case List to review, the ABOS cannot recertify this person through the traditional ABOS Board Certification Pathway. Those who recertify through the Non-Operative Pathway and return to operative care of patients are required to notify the ABOS within 18 months and proceed through an Oral Examination process.
