Be Aware Part 2

In this post, I would like to clarify the issue of Board Certification in Plastic Surgery. Many doctors are “Board Certified”. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are Board Certified in Plastic Surgery or anything resembling Plastic Surgery. Board Certification is usually associated with a specific area of medicine. For example, an OB/GYN doctor would be Board Certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (https://www.abog.org/) and an Internal Medicine doctor would be Board Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine (https://www.abim.org/). Plastic Surgeons are Board Certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery (https://www.abplasticsurgery.org/). All of these board certifications fall under the American Board of Medical Specialties (https://www.abms.org/). This organization works with the 24 specialty boards to maintain the standards for Board Certification. Confused yet?

What is confusing is that there is no law regarding what a doctor can label himself as and there are many “Boards” that do not fall under the American Board of Medical Specialties. There is no board certification for Cosmetic Surgery included in the American Board of Medical Specialties.

In order to be Board Certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery (https://www.abplasticsurgery.org/res…/training-requirements/) the following criteria must be met (this is what I did):

PREREQUISITE TRAINING

Residents entering plastic surgery training must complete 5 progressive years of clinical general surgery residency training, sufficient to qualify for certification by the American Board of Surgery (ABS), or approved alternate subspecialty pathway.

REQUISITE TRAINING

The Board requires a minimum of 3 years of Plastic Surgery Training for Independent programs and 6 years for Integrated programs. The final year must be at the level of senior responsibility.

EXAMINATION REQUIREMENTS

To qualify for an Application for Examination and Certification in Plastic Surgery, candidates must have a Final Confirmation Letter issued by the Board.

Candidates must hold active, inpatient admitting medical staff privileges in plastic surgery in a United States, Canadian or international hospital throughout the examination process.

Candidates must have a current, full, valid and unrestricted license to practice medicine with an expiration date valid through the examination.

Active practice in plastic surgery is a requirement for admissibility to the Oral Examination.

If you meet the above requirements, you can sit for the written and oral exam which you must pass to become Board Certified. If you have finished an accredited Plastic Surgery residency but have not taken your written or oral board exam, you are considered to be Board Eligible. After you become Board Certified, you have to maintain your certification (Maintenance of Certification) and, until recently, you had to re-certify every 10 years by taking a written examination.

So now you know how to become Board Certified in Plastic Surgery. In the next post, I will discuss how to know if your Plastic Surgeon is Board Certified and what some of the other “Boards” are and what their requirements are.