One Tool to Use in Assessing the Quality of Internal Medicine Residency Programs

One Tool to Use in Assessing the Quality of Internal Medicine Residency Programs

If you plan to apply for training in Internal Medicine, there is a website that you should know about. The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) site publishes the passing rates for all accredited Internal Medicine training programs, and the information is searchable by state. Because passing rates on the specialty certifying board examination is one measure of the quality of the training provided to residents by programs, this is very useful in researching specific programs in order to determine if the residents trained by that program were properly prepared to pass their IM specialty boards. While factors outside of the control of a program can sometimes affect passing rates, prospective applicants to programs should investigate the success of programs in preparing their residents to become board certified, and this online searchable database provides an important tool for doing exactly that. Once you have identified Internal Medicine programs that you are interested in and are considering applying to, visit the following website to locate the IM Board pass rates for each program.

http://www.abim.org/resources/states/

The ABIM database contains information about the internal medicine certifying examination performance of programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). For each residency program listed, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) reports the cumulative pass rate for the 2002 to 2004 certifying examinations in internal medicine.

What data are reported?
For each program, the number of candidates that took the examination, the number who passed, the percent that passed, and the 95% confidence interval is given.

Which residents are included in the calculation of a program's pass rate?
Candidates are included in the computation of a program's passing rate if they meet the following four conditions:

1. They are first takers of the 2002, 2003, or 2004 certifying examinations in internal medicine (repeat takers are excluded)
2. They completed training in the year of or the year before the first attempt (i.e., a candidate who took the 2004 certifying examination for the first time must have completed training in 2003 or 2004)
3. The final year of training is in internal medicine or a combined training program such as pediatrics and medicine
4. Candidates must have received their satisfactory final evaluation of clinical competence from the training program