The February 2020 issue of the American Board of Family Medicine’s (ABFM) newsletter, The Phoenix, features an article on the partnership between the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians and the ABFM to test a pilot of personalized stage activity planning for members who are board certified. The goal of this pilot is to see if family physicians could benefit from facilitated discussion to enhance their understanding of certification requirements, to use activities to help identify and address knowledge gaps, and to increase relevance of activity selection to their practice setting and needs.
The article states in part, “An outcome of a 2019 OAFP Board of Directors planning retreat was the desire for ABFM certification assistance and programming support at the state chapter level. This led to the idea of providing personalized board-certification planning assistance to members in concert with Knowledge Self-Assessment (KSA) Study Groups sponsored by the chapter in 2020. By offering this in conjunction with these study groups, the chapter hopes to help their member-diplomates with support in reaching their certification requirements in a timely and stress-free manner.
The article continues, “The OAFP developed a proposal to host four KSA Study Group sessions throughout Ohio and approached ABFM about working together on this pilot. ABFM was eager to collaborate, given that a redesign of the online Physician Portfolio is underway and could benefit from learning from Ohio in ways that could inform that process.”
The first session, held in conjunction with OAFP’s Family Medicine Workshop, allowed attendees the opportunity to remain after completion of the KSA to learn about updates in Family Medicine Certification focused on new options for tailoring certification activities most relevant to individual practice types and scope.
OAFP Past President Ryan Kauffman, MD, is featured prominently in the article.