American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), a non-profit evaluation organization periodically tests the quality of 1 on 4 practicing physicians in the United States every year. The pass rates on the initial attempts have been close to 86%, which I feel is pretty scary, assuming that 14% of the physicians are in the risk of not allowed to practice till they pass.
Amidst a lot of critical reviews about the evaluation system, I feel it is still a very reassuring practice to let the taxpayers know that the system cares for the quality of the practicing internists. When was the last time, we, IT professionals took such a professional re-certification? We do have internal exams/certifications that our organizations mandate to pass to get our promotions/hikes, but none of them stop us from practicing the work that we are doing.
Is such a re-certification required for our profession, when most of the problems we encounter are answered by Google anyways? Should we need a authority which puts rigorous control on the quality of professionals coding/designing/managing? Should our identity for quality be a certificate and not a resume?
