Table 6.
Personal impact of certifying body for lifestyle medicine.
| Instructions: Please rate your level of agreement, or disagreement, with the following statements about the potential IMPACT of the CERTIFYING BODY for LM on YOU as a clinician. In considering the following statements, please keep in mind that if certification in LM is done by the ABMS, instead of by ABLM, there are two ways this could be achieved | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. The first pathway to ABMS certification—primary certification—would be to have LM recognized as an independent member board and distinct medical specialty, with the same status as the other 24 member boards (e.g., preventive medicine, family medicine, surgery). This process would likely take 10 or more years and would first require a robust base of ACGME (Accreditation College for Graduate Medical Education) approved residency training programs in LM with a standard curriculum and competencies | ||||||
| 2. The second pathway to ABMS certification—subspecialty certification—would be to have LM recognized as a subspecialty under one or more existing ABMS member boards (e.g., sleep medicine is a subspecialty of anesthesiology, family medicine, internal medicine, otolaryngology, pediatrics, and neurology). This would allow board-certified diplomates in the primary board to get sub-certification in LM, based on experience, training, or potentially completing a fellowship. This process could be accomplished faster than the pathway above (e.g., LM as a distinct specialty), but could limit certification in LM to only those specialties offering sub-certification | ||||||
| Statement (Respondents, N = 351) | Likert category, % | Agree, % (Response, mean) a | ||||
| Agree (strongly) | Neutral | Disagree (strongly) | Not ABLM certified b | ABLM diplomate | P-Value c | |
| Certification of physicians in LM by ABMS would better meet my certification needs than does the current process of ABLM certification (n = 329) | 29 (9) | 37 | 34 (9) | 22 (3.23) | 34 (2.93) | .016 |
| If certification in LM was accomplished through ABMS, the best mechanism would be primary certification as a distinct, medical specialty (n = 331) | 23 (9) | 24 | 53 (13) | 21 (3.47) | 25 (3.27) | .086 |
| If certification in LM was accomplished through ABMS, the best mechanism would be subspecialty certification as a subspecialty under another medical specialty (n = 333) | 71 (28) | 16 | 14 (3) | 69 (2.26) | 73 (2.14) | .409 |
| Primary certification of physicians by ABMS in LM as a distinct specialty could limit professional opportunities for diplomates because they may not be certified by another medical specialty (e.g., internal medicine, family practice, preventive medicine) or eligible for a fellowship in another medicalspecialty (n = 336) | 69 (24) | 20 | 12 (2) | 71 (2.17) | 68 (2.22) | .660 |
| The current process of ABLM certification in LM, which requires all diplomates to first be certified in an existing ABMS specialty, provides me (or would provide me) with professional benefits and value beyond what I would get if only certified in LM as a distinct, ABMS specialty (n = 333) | 77 (29) | 15 | 8 (3) | 79 (2.09) | 76 (2.02) | .751 |
| If LM was certified by ABMS, under either of the 2 pathways described, the quality of education could be negatively impacted by reducing the relevance of ABLM (as it currently exists), by directing fees (from diplomates) to ABMS, and by potentially directing member dues away from ACLM to a primary ABMS specialty (n = 306) | 46 (12) | 40 | 14 (4) | 50 (2.57) | 45 (2.60) | .735 |
Abbreviations: ABLM, American Board of Lifestyle Medicine; ABMS, American Board of Medical Specialties; LM, lifestyle medicine.
aAgree percentage includes “agree” and “strongly agree” responses; mean is from 1 (agree strongly) to 5 (disagree strongly).
b37% of respondents identified as not certified by ABLM; 63% identified as diplomates of ABLM.
cIndependent-samples Mann–Whitney U test.