First and foremost, I want to wish you well and continued good health and success as you pursue your goal becoming a licensed DO and I welcome you as a colleague in our very distinctive profession. The trust implicit in a patient referring to YOU as “my doctor” is hard to win, and can be easily lost.
First and foremost, I want to wish you well and continued good health and success as you pursue your goal becoming a licensed DO and I welcome you as a colleague in our very distinctive profession. The trust implicit in a patient referring to YOU as “my doctor” is hard to win, and can be easily lost.
All of us at the NBOME have been working hard to tackle the many challenges brought on by the pandemic, and mitigating disruptions as you progress along your pathway to becoming fully qualified, licensed osteopathic physicians. We do hear you. We know that you are concerned about your health and the safety of your communities, with interferences in your education and training, and with your application process to residency programs. In addition, we know you share in the many other concerns, insecurities, and responsibilities commensurate with becoming a qualified physician.
We certainly understand that DO medical students, particularly those in the Class of 2021, are under an inordinate and unfair amount of stress with the uncertainty we all have faced this year. We are proud of the work that has been done in collaboration with Prometric Testing Centers to help accommodate almost 19K DO students and residents safely since May. This required significant resource investment, including satellite university centers and other agile solutions to expand test capacity, and we are proud of our staff and our partners. Listening to you, safe access to your licensure testing has remained a top priority.
Likewise with the COMLEX-USA Level 2-Performance Evaluation (Level 2-PE/clinical skills examination), disruptions were caused by the pandemic and necessitated the suspension of access to testing since March 2020. We recognized the need for DO students in the Class of 2021 and their Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (COM) to have choice and control as to when to test, once availability to safely do so was resumed. NBOME enthusiastically endorsed the June 4, 2020 decision by the AOA-Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation, the accrediting authority for the COMs, to temporarily modify the graduation standard that required passing Level 2-PE for the Class of 2021. This provides students and COMs the flexibility to delay individual testing for Level 2-PE, should access not be available to them, or should they feel unready to do so for any reason. Students this year can opt to delay taking this test for months, a year, even more, and still have no delay in progressing through graduation, into residency. When ready, they can then complete the Level 2-PE prior to taking COMLEX-USA Level 3 to demonstrate their important competencies for practice and full qualification for unrestricted medical licensure in any state.
Our goal all spring and summer was to continue to work with public health experts and other testing and medical and related healthcare regulatory authorities both in the United States and around the world, to eventually provide availability to safely take Level 2-PE, for those who are eligible and ready. At present, we continue to aim for the availability of Level 2-PE testing in November, 2020, as we monitor local and national circumstances and changing mandates due to the pandemic. The safety modifications (further detailed on our website) at our test centers follow local governmental mandates and the standards and recommendations of several teams of public health and infectious disease specialists, including those from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. Consultations with the medical and other health professions in the United States and internationally have been very helpful. Similar national clinical skills exams have resumed in Canada (Medical Council of Canada), the UK (General Medical Council), and in the U.S. with the podiatric medicine, optometry, and chiropractic professions, all with similar safety protocols.
With 25% of the graduating Class of 2021 already having passed Level 2-PE, this leaves us with a fairly manageable number of candidates in this class to test at our two National Centers for Clinical Skills Testing (suburban Philadelphia and Chicago areas.) An estimated 56% of these students attend COMs that are within 8 hours or less driving distance from one of these two testing centers, and 22% are 4 hours or less by car. To further increase availability and provide easier access for DO students in the western regions of the US, the NBOME is continuing to invest considerable resources in the exploration and development of a temporary satellite clinical skills testing location in California. This could potentially be available for testing for a defined time period as soon as March, 2021. We have frozen exam fee increases for the current test cycle and eliminated any exam rescheduling fees to further enhance flexibility for DO candidates.
NBOME stays in close contact with student leadership groups, including COSGP, SOMA, and the AOA-Bureau of Emerging Leaders. We continue to solicit their input on key issues. We very much appreciate these individuals and groups sharing student concerns and helping to communicate the facts during a period of growing misinformation and misconception across the profession. We regret that misinformation has been disseminated about our activities and motivations by third parties. We know that misinformation can jeopardize trust and contribute to feelings of disillusionment and further feelings of lack of control.
These student leader groups are aware of NBOME’s leadership role in advocacy for DO students in the Class of 2021 as they apply for residency programs, helping program directors to understand that residency applicants in the Class of 2021 should not be held accountable for results of licensing exam scores (e.g., COMLEX-USA Level 2-PE for DO medical students, USMLE Step 2-CS for MD medical students) that they have been unable to take due to the pandemic. The Organization of Program Director Associations (OPDA) and the Assembly of Osteopathic Graduate Medical Educators (AOGME) both endorsed statements to that effect, at the request of the NBOME, which were both shared with the Coalition for Physician Accountability. NBOME and AACOM worked together with the Advisory Committee of the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) to ensure that all residency program directors are aware that both USMLE Step 2-CS and COMLEX-USA Level 2-PE have both been suspended since March 2020. This information is displayed prominently on all applications in the Program Directors Work Station in the ERAS system, on all COMLEX-USA and USMLE transcripts displayed in ERAS, and is part of separate communications from ERAS sent to all program directors in 2020-2021.
We remain committed to doing our best, despite the obstacles, to communicate, to listen to input, and to continue to do what we can to mitigate disruptions in the educational and training pathway to DO medical licensure, all consistent with our mission to protect the public, to protect our patients, through assessment. More than ever, it’s important we work together through the multi-dimensional stages of this pandemic and the complexities of the pandemic recovery. We need to continue to build trust within the osteopathic medical family so we can continue to earn that same trust with our patients, who look to DOs for a high quality, empathetic and distinctive approach to medical care.
Please continue to stay tuned for the latest NBOME and COMLEX-USA updates and information on our website, or feel free to contact NBOME Client Services for any individual needs or queries at Clientservices@nbome.org or toll-free at 866-479-6828, Monday through Friday 7 AM-7 PM ET.
Sincerely yours,
John R. Gimpel, DO, MEd
President & CEO
National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners
