Friday, April 27, 2012

MOC is stupid

I am going to again bitch about the MOC. I planning on mocking the MOC.

MOC, for the non-medical among us, stands for Maintenance of Certification. IOW, a shakedown from ABOG to get more money out of me even though I am board-certified. $895/year to take a test that has NOTHING to do with medicine.

I had some free time yesterday, so I started on the test. The idea is that you read some articles and then answer 4 questions on every article. Some articles are good & actually are worth reading. Many are a complete and utter waste of time. Most questions on any article are STUPID!!!!!!! For example, one question asked us to find and correct a FUCKING TYPOGRAPHICAL ERROR in the article. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!?! Yeah, THAT is helping me become a better doctor.

And the other thing I want to bitch about, if I pay damned near $900 for your stupid test, ALL of the articles better be available to me for free. I don't subscribe to NEJM or the Lancet. I don't want to pay for 6 of their articles (don't worry, I have a work-around involving my DH's job at a university). I don't want to pay for an article from a pediatric journal. Give me the articles for free online. The Grey Journal allows it (of course, the one journal that I get & they are the ones with the free access to MOC), why can't the others?

1 comment:

Mary said...

And people wonder why it costs so much to see a doctor.

My DIL is starting the 3rd year of her residency. The nickel and dime crap that patients never know about amazes me. I am glad my son has had very good jobs to offset this crap.

Thanks for sharing that it never ends.

Good luck with your MOC