Everyone wants to be believe his doctor is thoroughly tested, and if the doctor is over the age of forty, you want to be sure he's not completely senile, so don't we all like the idea of testing and retesting doctors with "certification" exams to be sure they haven't lost their edge?
On the other hand, how would you feel about having to take your driver's license exam every other year? Or suppose you had to take a written exam to be allowed to operate your lawn mower? Now there's a potentially dangerous piece of machinery. Or suppose we sat you down for a three hour exam to be sure you knew the fundamentals of raising your children--after all, what more vulnerable people are there than children who are totally dependent on their parents?
I was amazed how they just shoved our newborn babe into our arms and sent us home with him without even requiring us to take out a number two pencil and taking even a ten question multiple choice test. When your child cries, you should: A/ Turn up the music very loud B/ Place him in a sound proof room C/ Call your neighbor who has five kids and see if you can send your baby over to her house for a while.
A parent certification exam to be given when the children are one day, one year, three years, five years old. Sounds reasonable to me.
Got the point?
Qualifying exams are always a good idea, unless you are the one who has to take them or unless you look carefully at what's being tested and what questions are being asked.
The original idea of doctor's exams has been so perverted and corrupted, the whole process is now doing more harm than good.
Where once you wanted an exam to simply demonstrate the physician has the basic facts well understood, now exams are being used as marketing tools so a physician who did his medical school in Iran, his internship in Nigeria and his residency in outer Osh Kosh and his fellowship at Florida Swamp Hospital can now advertize he's "Board Certified" in internal medicine, and furthermore that means he's a safer and better bet than the guy who went to Harvard Medical school and did all his training there, but has not passed his boards in internal medicine. And believe me, the more you know which is not in the standard textbook, or in the book the Board will sell you for another thousand dollars, the less chance you have of passing the exam.
Today, every task you do, there is somebody looking to make some money "certifying" you. You want to read a bone density, there's an organization which, for less than a thousand dollars will give you a "course" and a diploma suitable for framing to hang on your wall saying you are not just safe to interpret that bone density test, but you are better than the guy who does not have that paper on the wall.
Organizations which long ago would have gone extinct, like the American College of Physicians, have struck gold giving "board exams" in all the medical specialties. And now the College is pushing to get physicians to be required to take those exams more and more often. Let's test yearly. Maybe monthly, to keep that cash flow going.
The College's lobbyists have been out there selling their pitch so now a state like North Carolina, which is an attractive state for retiring people, including retiring doctors, requires you pass your board exam within the past few years in order to be licensed to practice there. Now that's something new. This serves the interests of several special interest groups all at once--local doctors don't have to face competition from docs who have practiced in other states and now, in their sixties, want to move to North Carolina and practice their last decade there. The College gets to press other states to "Protect" their citizens the way North Carolina does. And the citizens get sold the bill of goods that only the best doctors get licensed in North Carolina.
I suppose it comes down to knowing what good is--and clearly the bureaucrats on the board of licensing in NC have a problem with that.
But in the information age, when high paying jobs go to the well educated, we want to be sure our accountant, our physician, our lawyer, our Congressmen know what they are doing.
Funny thing is, you notice, the lawyers and Congressmen have not been rushing to retake their bar exams, or to institute a licensing exam for legislators.
Ever think about that?
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