Background. Longitudinal assessments are increasingly common as a component of continuing certification programs offered by medical specialty boards. The goal of this study was to understand anesthesiologists’ utilization pattern, performance, and perception of the longitudinal assessment program administered by the American Board of Anesthesiology. Methods. We analyzed assessment usage and survey data from all anesthesiologists who participated in the Maintenance of Certification in Anesthesiology (MOCA) Minute from January 2018 to December 2019. Results. During the 24-month study period, 25,404 anesthesiologists completed all 120 questions assigned in at least 1 calendar year, collectively 5,801,160 responses to 1,646 unique questions. Participants were more likely to complete questions at the end of each quarter, with the highest frequency at the end of the year. Seventy-five percent of responses were first-time attempts and 17% were first repeats. The median interval between original question presentation and first repeat was 314 days. The mean (standard deviation SD) percent correct score was 68.3% (8.0%) for first-time questions and 75.5% (12.6%) for first repeats. The mean (SD) time to answer a first-time question was 26.8 (13.1) seconds, with shorter times for questions with correct than incorrect responses (25.0 12.7 vs. 30.7 13.3 seconds, time difference of -5.69 seconds 95% confidence interval: -5.71 to -5.66, p<0.001). Of 5.11 million responses with ratings of relevance (88.2% of all responses analyzed), 4.86 million (95.2%) were felt to be somewhat or very relevant to practice. The percent correct scores were higher for responses with higher relevance and confidence ratings. For responses rated “not relevant”, “somewhat relevant”, and “very relevant”, the percent correct was 58.5%, 67.6%, and 77.0%, respectively; for responses rated as “unsure”, “somewhat confident”, and “very confident”, the percent correct was 53.6%, 67.9%, and 84.4%, respectively. Conclusions. MOCA Minute was generally used as designed. Evidence of learning was suggested by improved performance on repeat questions.
Sun et al. (Mon,) studied this question.