Board certification

Wow. It is hard to believe that I have been away from blogging for almost an entire year. During that time, it has also been amazing to me that people have continued to post on this Blog and have continued to ask me when I will post again. Well, I am officially back in action now and you can count on more thought provoking and interesting posts from yours truly.

What have I been doing all of this time and why did I take so much time off? Well, you can be rest assured that I was not swinging in a hammock as I was being fanned and being fed grapes fresh of the vine. No, far from it. I was pursuing the final stage of board certification in my field -- clinical neuropsychology. In medicine, board certification is commonplace, since over 90% of physicians are board certified. In psychology, however, the reverse is true, with less than 10% of psychologists obtaining board certification status. And of those psychologists, neuropsychology is the subspecialty that tends to pursue board certification, likely because my field is strongly associated with the medical model of training.

So what is board certification and why is it important? Board certification is a mechanism by which one is evaluated by his or her peers to determine if the individual is competent to practice in a specialized area. Isn't that what a license would tell us, you may ask? Not necessarily. In most states, the Psychology Scope of Practice Act is a generic licensing law, meaning that any psychologist can provide specialized services to the public -- if he/she has the proper training to do so. The problem is that states leave it up to the practitioner to decide if he/she is competent to offer specialized services. Unfortunately, some individuals offer services they are not qualified or competent to provide. While one might think that the government would pursue such individuals, this tends to only happens in cases where something egregious has happened to a patient. Far too often, patients are provided substandard care by people who claim to be neuropsychologists but actuallly have very little formal training in the area. This can result in patients being diagnosed with brain damage when there is none, told they have no brain damage where there is some, and referred for all different types of inappropriate treatments, etc.

So how can the public determine who is board certified? For physicians, complete a search on the webpage for the American Board of Medical Specialists. For psychology, search the website for the American Board of Profesional Psychology (ABPP). There you can find numerous board certified psychologists by subspeciality. A few weeks ago, I received a notice that I was conferred board certification status by ABPP in Clinical Neuropsycholy, hence the new initials (ABPP-CN) next to my name. The specific board that works with ABPP to confer board certification status upon clinical neuropsychologists is the American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology. You can search for providers by state and city on these websites. In the interest of full disclosure, two other boards that certify clinical neuropsychologist include the American Board of Professional Neuropsychology and the American Board of Pediatric Neuropsychology.

When I stopped blogging, I essentially decided to take about 10 months off to prepare for an intense three hour oral examination. My mind had been set on achieving this goal ever since I began graduate school, which is why I selected a program (Nova Southeastern University that offered specialized training in clinical neuropsychology that met the training requirements of the American Psychological Association for clinical neuropsychology. This was then followed by a one year internship (neuropsychology specialization) at The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and a two year neuropsychology fellowship at SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine. I then began the Neuropsychology Assessment Program at SUNY Upstate Medical University.

So it has been a long time coming and as you can tell, when you have all of this training, it is very frustrating to see people with next to no training offer themselves up to the public as "neuropsychologists." Making the situation even worse is that there are many well trained people in my field who for whatever reason decide not to pursue board certification. The problem though is that the public has no reliable and practical way to differentiate the person with little training from the one with extensive training if neither are board certified. This is why board certification is so important because it provides the public with a reliable and practical way to determine who meets the training credentials and who has proven themselves to be competent in the area they practice in.

I am happy that I put blogging aside for a year to achieve my goals. And now, I am going to kick back and enjoy life alot more now that I do not need to spend all of my free time studying. There will not be blog entries each day, but I will try to post a few entries a week and provide you with the types of entries you have all enjoyed in the past.