Setting the highest certification standards for psychiatrists and neurologists since 1934

Program Goal

The mission of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) is to promote and assess the competence of psychiatrists and neurologists to provide high quality care in an equitable and inclusive manner.

The goal of the ABPN Continuing Certification (CC) Program is to ensure that its diplomates adhere to the highest standards in medicine and pursue excellence in all areas of patient care. The ABPN CC Program serves patients, families, and communities by providing diplomates with specialty-specific credentials on which the public and those acting on its behalf can rely. The ABPN CC Program ensures that diplomates are in good professional standing, are keeping up to date with advances in medical knowledge and are working to improve their personal competence and skills and the quality of care provided by the systems in which they work.

The ABPN has developed a CC Program for its diplomates that attempts to strike a balance between what may be required by some organizations that license, credential, and pay physicians, and what is reasonable and straightforward enough to be acceptable to and accomplished by busy physicians. The ABPN has worked to develop a CC Program that promotes and documents the competence of diplomates throughout their CC cycles. Many ABPN diplomates already meet the requirements of the various components of CC through their professional activities and institutional quality improvement programs. The ABPN CC Program endeavors to recognize and give diplomates credit for those efforts.

The ABPN goal for its diplomates in CC is for them to commit to a process of lifelong learning so that they might continually improve the care they provide to their patients. The ABPN is determined to support its diplomates in their efforts to pursue and document their lifelong learning, to promote the highest evidence-based guidelines and standards of care, and to advance the clinical practices of psychiatry and neurology.

ABPN Position on Advocacy for Board Certification and CC

The ABPN has never advocated for board certification as a requirement for state medical licensure and does not believe that board certification or continuing certification (CC) should be requirements for initial licensure or for maintenance of licensure (MOL). The ABPN strongly recommends to state medical boards, however, that if diplomates do complete the requirements of CC then that accomplishment should suffice for MOL.

While the ABPN recognizes that board certification has long been considered by clinical institutions and the public at large as a valid measure of the training and competence of physicians to provide quality patient care, the ABPN has never advocated that board certification or CC be used as a credentialing requirement by any institutions or programs other than for faculty and program directors in ACGME-accredited or ABPN-approved training programs. The ABPN does believe, however, that the medical staff of clinical institutions should be free to select for themselves what their credentialing criteria will be.

For patient information about physician certification and what it means, the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) provides a website — Certification Matters — as a resource for the public to learn more about how board certification goes above and beyond basic medical licensure. The public can learn how physicians who are board certified meet nationally recognized standards for education, knowledge, experience and skills to provide high quality care in a specific medical specialty. For more information, see www.certificationmatters.org.