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Wife is 3 weeks pregnant and we have her 1st appointment next week this particular OB/GYN doctor. She is in a group of doctors....5 of them to be exact, 3 women and 2 men. All of them are board certified, with the exception of 2 of the women being "BOARD ELIGIBLE since Sept. 2007" Is this a big deal or not ? Please advise.
Wife is 3 weeks pregnant and we have her 1st appointment next week this particular OB/GYN doctor. She is in a group of doctors....5 of them to be exact, 3 women and 2 men. All of them are board certified, with the exception of 2 of the women being "BOARD ELIGIBLE since Sept. 2007" Is this a big deal or not ? Please advise.
Board eligible means that the physician completed the requirements to take the national OB/GYN boards but has not yet taken them. An OB/GYN physician completes 4 years of medical school followed by a 4 year residency. Board certification includes both a written and oral exam as well as experience. Maybe she doesn't have enough experience as yet. Feel free to ask her this at your first visit.
Board eligible means that the physician completed the requirements to take the national OB/GYN boards but has not yet taken them. An OB/GYN physician completes 4 years of medical school followed by a 4 year residency. Board certification includes both a written and oral exam as well as experience. Maybe she doesn't have enough experience as yet. Feel free to ask her this at your first visit.
The experience is the residency.
Maybe she never took the test or didn't wanted to pay for them. Being board cert. is a pain in the a..
Board eligible means that the physician completed the requirements to take the national OB/GYN boards but has not yet taken them. An OB/GYN physician completes 4 years of medical school followed by a 4 year residency. Board certification includes both a written and oral exam as well as experience. Maybe she doesn't have enough experience as yet. Feel free to ask her this at your first visit.
The tests are also done at different times...and I think they may only be offered once each year. So she may have passed the oral, but not the written yet, or vice versa.
I know this is an old post, but it is still one of the first regarding this topic that comes up on a google search, so I thought I'd give a reply since it looks like most of the respondents here are just guessing. To become board certified in Ob/Gyn you have to complete 4 years of medical school followed by 4 years of an accredited residency program in the US. At the completion of residency training, the physician sits for their written board exam in Ob/Gyn. If they pass this exam and have an unrestricted license to practice medicine in any state in the US, then they can be referred to as "board eligible." It is not until they pass the oral board in Ob/Gyn that they can be "board certified." To qualify to take the oral board, the physician has to have an unrestricted medical license, unrestricted privileges to practice as an Ob/Gyn, and typically 3-5 years of experience in practice after residency. The only way to take the exam sooner than this is to submit a request to the American Board of Ob/Gyn (ABOG) asking for permission to take it early. There are only a limited number of spots for physicians to take the exam early and most of those go to fellows being trained in subspecialties (e.g. Gyn/Onc, Urogynecology, etc) whose practice will exclude either Obstetrics or Gynecology. If your physician is board eligible and not board certified, then most likely s/he has been in practice less than 3-5 years and has not sat for the exam yet. It has nothing to do with them being lazy or putting it off or even failing an exam (if you failed the written exam you're not board eligible yet).
Just to confuse you more, though...these terms are no longer used by ABOG. Here are the statuses you should see these days:
ABOG registered Residency Graduate: has completed residency but not yet completed the written exam.
Active Candidate: formerly known as "board eligible"
Diplomate: "board certified" This status is time-limited and must be renewed periodically by completing maintenance of certification requirements.
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