The American Board of Family Medicine certification examination: a proxy for quality

In this issue of Family Medicine, Terry and Hill present evidence from a recently conducted survey that suggests that osteopathic family medicine residents in training programs whose positions have been accredited by both the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), so called “dual accreditation,” are more likely to be certified by the AOA and less likely to seek certification by the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM).1 While studies of this nature are always limited by their inherent selection and recall biases, the conclusions reached by the authors nevertheless raise issues that merit careful consideration and further discussion