In Case You Missed It: New 5-Year Cycle

You never have to take the one-day exam again to maintain your certification – unless you want to! Using the longitudinal assessment as a foundation, the new 5-Year Cycle promotes ongoing learning and knowledge retention and offers increased flexibility and convenience to customize your certification.

In the year your next exam is due, you will begin the new 5-Year Cycle to maintain your certification, which includes:

1. Certification Exam: Answer 25 quarterly exam questions (longitudinal assessment) or opt to take the one-day exam in year 4.
2. Certification Activities: Earn 60 certification points through Self-Assessment and Performance Improvement activities.
3. Continuing Medical Education: Earn 200 CME credits.
4. Professionalism and Licensure: Continuously comply with ABFM’s Guidelines for Professionalism, Licensure, and Personal Conduct, which includes maintaining an active, valid, and full license(s) to practice medicine in the United States or Canada.
5. Annual Fee: Submit annual certification fee.

Transitioning to the 5-Year Cycle

ABFM will honor your current 10-year cycle. You will not be required to transition to the new 5-Year Cycle any earlier than 10 years from when you last met your exam requirement. For example, if you met your last exam requirement in 2022, you will not be required to transition to the new 5-Year Cycle until 2032.

To determine when you will transition to the 5-Year Cycle, please visit your MyABFM Portfolio.

Registration for 5-Year Cycle

If your exam is due in 2025, registration is now available within your MyABFM Portfolio. Log in now to view your current status and begin longitudinal assessment exam questions!

If your exam is due in 2026, registration will be available this summer. Complete your outstanding stage requirements now to access registration as soon as it’s available!

Learn More About the 5-Year Cycle

Why Is Longitudinal Assessment at the Center of the 5-Year Cycle?

Since launching the the longitudinal assessment in 2019, approximately 34,000 family physicians have participated to meet their exam requirement. The outcomes have been outstanding, with satisfaction over 95%, 99% retention year to year, and significant reduction in test anxiety. Most important, family physicians report they are learning as they participate.

A recent white paper, Conceptual Foundations: for Designing Continuing Certification Assessments for Physicians, led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, synthesizes findings from over 600 studies. ABFM collaborated with the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Medical Specialties, and faculty from the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychology to compile evidence supporting the ongoing assessment of physicians’ clinical knowledge and the shift toward longitudinal assessment.

Based on literature and research spanning a range of disciplines related to the development and maintenance of expertise in physicians, researchers identified four central themes:

• Physicians need to keep cognitive skills current in the contexts of changing standards of care and of skill decline over time.
• Self-assessing areas of weaknesses, although helpful, is unlikely to be sufficient given the presence of several systematic biases in self-assessment.
• Periodic tests are likely to be extremely valuable in complementing self-assessment because the act of taking a test itself enhances learning and retention of cognitive skills.
• Testing can also serve as a motivator by providing goals and consequences.

The research also identified a crosscutting finding that feedback loops in the medical system are often incomplete, which can lead to poor learning and maintenance of expertise and can also lead to poor metacognitive awareness of limitations in knowledge. Longitudinal assessment holds the potential to serve as one way to close the feedback loop and promote learning and retention.

To learn more, visit our research website.