After nearly an hour of open mics and talk therapy, the session came to a less-animated end. Attendees drifted off to evening events and, no doubt, nearby hotel bars for postgame MOC analysis. Dr. Baron left with the look of a New York fan relieved simply to escape Fenway Park physically unscathed after a Yankees win.
Will the communal catharsis from the Beantown Airing of Grievances – and similar sessions elsewhere – earn ABIM more time to morph MOC into something more acceptable and relevant to its test-takers and fee-payers before more physicians flee to upstart competing boards? Probably for many physicians, for whom ABIM’s MOC program remains at best a valued, necessary credential, and at worst a necessary evil.
But others say they’ve had enough.
As one physician emphatically declared to her colleagues in room 107 and beyond: “I would like the opportunity to put ‘Boycotting the MOC’ as my status on the ABIM website!”