For more information, e-mail T. Susan Hill, ABFPRS Executive Director.
DATELINE: WASHINGTON,
D.C.
SEPTEMBER 2001
REPORT FROM THE ABFPRS
By Wayne F. Larrabee, Jr., M.D., ABFPRS President
The ABFPRS provides a mechanism through which surgeons who specialize in otolaryngology's largest subspecialty can earn additional recognition for their knowledge and skills. The following report summarizes ABFPRS activity during the past 12 months.
Annual examination
The ABFPRS held its annual examination on June 23-24, 2001, in Washington, D.C. Fifty-nine surgeons sat for the test, bringing to 834 the total number of examinees to date. This test was the 17th since the ABFPRS was established in 1986.
The examination has two parts--the written test, which consists of 300 multiple-choice items, and the oral test, which consists of 12 protocols. This year, both the written and oral tests again earned high reliability ratings during independent analysis of exam results. The reliability rating is the degree to which test scores are consistent and dependable. The failure rate was within the acceptable range for an examination at the subspecialty level.
The highest overall score was earned by Jenifer L. Henderson, M.D., of Washington, D.C. Her achievement won her the 2001 Jack R. Anderson Prize for Scholastic Excellence. Tied for second place were J. Madison Clark, M.D., of Mt. Pleasant, S.C., and Ali R. Namazie, M.D., of Tarzana, Calif. Tied for third place were Brian S. Jewett, M.D., of Miami, Fla., and Jeffrey R. Raval, M.D., of Denver, Colo.
All five prize winners took the examination as a requirement for completing year-long fellowships with the Educational and Research Foundation for the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (ERF/AAFPRS). Fellows may apply their exam scores toward ABFPRS certification, if they meet other requirements; however, fellowships are not required to be eligible for ABFPRS certification if a surgeon has sufficient, additional operative experience to qualify as a regular candidate. To date, 481 surgeons have taken the exam as fellows, while 349 have taken it as regular candidates for certification. The other four examinees took the exam through the European Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery (EAFPS), which is developing a new certification program that includes passage of the ABFPRS exam among its requirements. The EAFPS is the first member society of the International Federation of Facial Plastic Surgery Societies to accept the ABFPRS's invitation to use its examination to advance facial plastic surgery standards worldwide.
Diplomate profile
Of the 834 examinees to date, 611 have completed all requirements for certification (see "ABFPRS requirements," this page). The 34 who achieved certification this year comprise the first class of ABFPRS diplomates whose certificates are time-limited to 10 years. Among this class was John S. Rhee, M.D., of Milwaukee, Wis., whose standing among peers earned him recognition as the 600th surgeon to achieve ABFPRS certification.
Counting the 2001 class of diplomates, ABFPRS certificants reside in 46 states, four Canadian provinces, and one U.S. territory. The majority also are certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology; however, an increasing number earned their primary certificate from the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Applicants for ABFPRS certification must hold prior certification from the ABOto or the ABPS (or the Royal College of Physicians and Services in Canada).
ABFPRS diplomates focus their practices in a variety of ways. This year, 97% of ABFPRS diplomates report spending some practice time performing cosmetic surgery, while 83% perform some reconstructive surgery. They spend the balance of their practice time performing other otolaryngologic procedures, including cleft lip/palate and craniofacial/skull-base surgery, head and neck cancer surgery, burn reconstruction, and diving and hyperbaric medicine.
ABFPRS diplomates also practice in a variety of settings. This year, 35% report spending some time in an academic practice, with the median amount of time spent being 40%. Also, 54% spend some time in a private solo practice, 20% in a private single-specialty group, and 9% in a private, multi-specialty group--with the median amount of time spent being 100% in each of these settings. Further, 3% spend a median of 100% of their time in other settings, ranging from the armed services and the Veterans Administration to HMOs, hospitals, and medical foundations.
Support for the ABFPRS
In a show of grassroots support for the ABFPRS, eight more state and national medical societies joined the ranks of ABFPRS sponsors during the past year. These actions bring to 22 the total number of sponsoring societies, which has included the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery since 1996. With the adoption of new regulations in Texas this year and the renewal of its equivalency status in California, the ABFPRS credential continues to be recognized in all 50 states, U.S. territories, and Canadian provinces. Continuing support of the ABFPRS credential by diplomates is noteworthy, with more than 89.3% paying voluntary dues again this year.
Diplomates also show their support for the ABFPRS by volunteering considerable time to developing and administering the ABFPRS examination and certification programs. I would like to thank everyone whose efforts have made this report possible.
I encourage you to consider applying for ABFPRS certification during the 2002 cycle. Applications are due January 15. ABFPRS application materials are available online only.
DATELINE: WASHINGTON,
D.C.
SEPTEMBER 2001
PATIENTS DEMAND SUBSPECIALTY CERTIFICATION--SHOULDN'T YOU?
By Wayne F. Larrabee, Jr., M.D., ABFPRS President
If you perform facial plastic surgery, please consider certification by the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (ABFPRS). According to a recent Market Facts survey of 1,000 households, patients are more likely to choose a surgeon based on subspecialty identification than primary certification--and the more directly the subcertification relates to the procedure the patient wants, the better.
That's why more than 600 surgeons -- both plastic surgeons and otolaryngologists -- have earned certification from the ABFPRS, the board that recognizes expertise exclusively in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery.
To be eligible for certification, a surgeon must:
If you meet these requirements, I encourage you to consider applying for ABFPRS certification during the 2002 cycle. Applications are due January 15. ABFPRS application materials are available online only.
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, D.C.
JULY 1998
ABFPRS DIPLOMATES RECEIVE ONGOING SERVICES AND BENEFITS
For diplomates, certification by the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (ABFPRS) provides far more than documentary evidence of the ability to meet rigorous subspecialty standards.
None of these ongoing services, which are provided automatically to every ABFPRS diplomate, is supported by initial certification fees. Rather, they are funded entirely by voluntary contributions.
To make a contribution, contact Susan Hill, ABFPRS Executive Director.
DATELINE: DENVER, CO
SEPTEMBER 7, 2001
NEWLY ELECTED MEMBERS OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND SENIOR ADVISERS
Mark V. Connelly, M.D., of La Crosse, Wis., and Harrison C. Putman, III, M.D., of Peoria, Ill., were elected to six-year terms as members of the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Board of Directors at the ABFPRS¹s recent meeting in Denver. G. Richard Holt, M.D., of Alexandria, Va., was appointed to the ABFPRS Senior Advisory Council. Re-elected to one-year terms as ABFPRS officers were: Wayne F. Larrabee Jr., M.D., of Seattle, Wash., as president; Devinder S. Mangat, M.D., of Cincinnati, Ohio, as vice president; Peter A. Hilger, M.D., of Edina, Minn., as secretary; and Ira D. Papel, M.D., of Owings Mills, Md., as treasurer. Peter A. Adamson, M.D., of Toronto, Ontario, continues as immediate past president.
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, D.C.
SEPTEMBER 2001
34 SURGEONS BECOME ABFPRS DIPLOMATES IN 2001
In 2001 the ABFPRS Board of Directors determined that the following 34 surgeons had met all of the requirements to become ABFPRS diplomates. The action brings the total number of diplomates to 611.
Peter J. Abramson, M.D.
Michael Armstrong, Jr., M.D.
Charles M. Boyd, M.D.
Joseph Campanelli, III, M.D.
Andrew C. Campbell, M.D.
Thomas A. Dalsaso, Jr., M.D.
Steven H. Dayan, M.D.
Edward E. Dickerson, IV, M.D.
Brian E. Emery, M.D.
Paul A. Evangelisti, M.D.
Michael E. Goldman, M.D.
Neal D. Goldman, M.D.
Robert F. Gray, Jr., M.D.
David Greene, M.D.
Jonathan D. Hall, M.D.
Thomas W. Herendeen, M.D.
Victor G. Lacombe, M.D.
Harrison Heeyoung Lee, M.D.
David B. Lovice, M.D.
Jon E. Mendelsohn, M.D.
Garrison V. Morin, M.D.
Saman Naficy, M.D.
Orville D. Palmer, M.D.
Benjamin C. Pease, M.D.
Christopher J. Rathfoot, M.D.
John S. Rhee, M.D.
Seth A. Riddle, M.D.
Gregory D. Roberts, M.D.
Michael H. Rosenberg, M.D.
Dhafer S. Salama, M.D.
Angie U. Song, M.D.
Jason L. Swerdloff, M.D.
Rudolph J. Triana, Jr., M.D.
Deborah Watson, M.D.
If you are interested in the 2002 ABFPRS certification cycle, application materials are available online only.
DATELINE: DENVER, CO
SEPTEMBER 2001
ADAMSON WINS 2001 SCHOENROCK AWARD
Peter A. Adamson, M.D., of Toronto, Ontario, has been named the 2001 recipient of the Larry D. Schoenrock Distinguished Service Award. Established in 1997, the award recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution to the integrity of the examination and certification process for facial plastic surgery.
"No single individual has exerted a greater guiding and sustaining force to the standardization of our fellowship program and the development of our examination program than Peter Adamson," said ABFPRS President Wayne F. Larrabee, Jr., MD, in announcing the award. "He is one of facial plastic surgery's great friends and true leaders."
Dr. Adamson dates his active interest in AAFPRS matters to his 1980 fellowship with the late Jack Anderson, MD, and Calvin Johnson, MD, in New Orleans. "Jack had a real passion for the AAFPRS. You'd be looking for him because he's an hour late and find that he's on the phone about Academy business. He had this big office, his private space, and you knew something really big was up when the door was closed," he recalls.
It was Dr. Anderson who suggested to Dr. Adamson that he organize some mechanism for keeping graduate fellows involved with the AAFPRS, and that was the beginning of the Graduate Fellows Committee--and Dr. Adamson's involvement with the AAFPRS. Since then, he has been on 20 AAFPRS committees, chaired six, and served nine years on the AAFPRS Board of Directors--including one year (1996) as AAFPRS president. His pivotal role in the standardization of the AAFPRS Foundation fellowship program came in the mid 1980s, followed immediately by his efforts to develop the fellowship examination that, under the auspices of the FPS Fellowship Examination Corporation, is now administered by the ABFPRS. He was elected to a three-year stint as ABFPRS president in 1997, following terms as secretary and treasurer.
As ABFPRS president, Dr. Adamson led efforts to advance recognition of the specialty, secure its finances, and continuously improve its examination and certification programs.
Throughout his term, he eloquently defended the ABFPRS as the de facto conjoint subcertification board while the ABMS pushed the ABOto and ABPS to establish an as-yet unrealized alternative. He lent personal support to a regulatory battle in Texas to ensure that diplomates there could continue to disclose their ABFPRS credential, and kept watch over numerous other legal skirmishes from Florida to California. Ten years after recruiting the ABFPRS's first sponsoring organization (the Canadian Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in 1991), Dr. Adamson recently won ABFPRS's endorsement by the Canadian Society of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. His appeal to fellow board members to invite their own societies to sponsor the ABFPRS led to endorsements in Indiana, Michigan, New York, and Washington, bringing to 22 the total number of ABFPRS sponsoring societies.
In addition to building external support, Dr. Adamson lent his office to strengthening the financial foundation of the examination program. With a generous gift from Howard W. Smith, MD, DMD, he guided the ABFPRS's purchase of its own headquarters building in 1999. He personally pledged $25,000 to the Campaign for Facial Plastic Surgery, a joint fund-raising endeavor of the AAFPRS Foundation and the FPS Fellowship Examination Corporation that spanned his presidency.
Among other landmarks of Dr. Adamson's ABFPRS tenure were a large-scale review of banked oral protocols; initiation of new reports about fellows' exam scores to fellowship directors; and adoption of time-limited certificates, beginning with the class of 2001. Dr. Adamson's support of the idea that the ABFPRS examination might be used in other countries as part of their own certifying programs led in 2000 to two members of the European Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery taking the ABFPRS exam. In June 2001, two more EAFPS members sat for the exam, which also was notable for the fact that Dr. Adamson served as an oral examiner for the 17th consecutive time since the first exam was given in September 1988.
Overall, the number of surgeons examined by the ABFPRS rose 24.8% to 779 while Dr. Adamson was president, and the number of those completing all certification requirements rose 33.1% to 575.
Nominations for the 2002 Larry D. Schoenrock Distinguished Service Award should be submitted by December 15 to the FPS Fellowship Examination Corporation, 115C South St. Asaph Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. For awards criteria, contact FPS FEC Executive Director at that address; call (703) 549-3223; or e-mail the ABFPRS office.
DATELINE: DENVER, CO
SEPTEMBER, 2001
RHEE IS 600TH ABFPRS DIPLOMATE
"The American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is like a family," notes John S. Rhee, MD, of Milwaukee, Wis., who recently became the ABFPRS's 600th diplomate "ABFPRS diplomates support one another, share ideas and challenges, and encourage one another's career development. It's a very nurturing environment."
A full-time academician, Dr. Rhee is an assistant professor in the department of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where he also serves as chief of the division of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery. He maintains a clinical practice devoted mainly to maxillofacial trauma, skin cancer surgery and reconstruction, functional nasal surgery, and cosmetic rhinoplasties.
Dr. Rhee graduated from Dartmouth College and received his medical degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. After completing an internship in general surgery and a residency in otolaryngology at New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center, he took a one-year AAFPRS Foundation fellowship with Robert L. Simons, MD, and Richard E. Davis, MD, at the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Fla. He currently is pursuing a master's in public health at the Medical College of Wisconsin and conducts research on quality of life issues in patients with skin cancer. His other research lies in biomechanics of maxillofacial trauma.
A strong advocate of the Academy Foundation fellowship program, Dr. Rhee is grateful to Drs. Simons and Davis for mentoring him through his fellowship year. He also appreciates the roles that Drs. Wayne F. Larrabee, Jr., Dean M. Toriumi, and G. Richard Holt have played in his career development.
"ABFPRS certification is an important step for every facial plastic surgeon," concludes Dr. Rhee. "The certification process encourages us to develop our professional skills, and becoming a diplomate makes us part of a group dedicated to promoting the highest possible standards for facial plastic surgery."
Application forms for the 2002 ABFPRS certification cycle are available online only.
Five Surgeons Earn Top Honors in ABFPRS Exam; Henderson wins Anderson Prize
Jenifer L. Henderson, MD, of Washington, D.C., was awarded the 2001 Jack R. Anderson Prize for Scholastic Excellence this month at the AAFPRS Fall Meeting in Denver, Colo. She faced stiff competition for the prize, which each year goes to the surgeon who earns the highest score on the ABFPRS examination. Not far off Dr. Henderson's mark were two surgeons who tied for second highest score and two more who tied for third.
A lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps, Dr. Henderson is one of four facial plastic surgeons practicing in the Navy. "The Navy is very supportive of facial plastic surgery, and I had excellent exposure to facial plastic surgery during my navy training," she notes. After receiving her medical degree from the University of Southern California, Dr. Henderson took a surgical internship at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Calif. She then served for a year on Okinawa as a general medical officer before returning to San Diego to complete a residency in otolaryngology. Her next assignment was the naval hospital in Yokosuka, Japan, where she served as staff otolaryngologist. Then, she applied for and received approval to take a civilian fellowship, with Drs. Wayne F. Larrabee Jr. and Craig S. Murakami of Seattle, Wash.
"It was incredible!" she says of her fellowship experience. "I couldn't have been in a better place or with better people." Of course, she had anticipated this, having been taught in her residency by one of Dr. Larrabee's former fellows, Craig L. Cupp, MD. "I think this makes me a grandfather or something," quips Dr. Larrabee.
Dr. Henderson is now at the Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Center, where her duties include teaching residents and serving the medical needs of military personnel from all branches of the service, together with their family members. "I'm looking forward to a diversified practice that includes repair of congenital deformities, cancer defects, and traumatic injuries, as well as cosmetic procedures," she says.
She also looks forward to completing the requirements for ABFPRS. "I think it's important for facial plastic surgeons to get certified," she asserts. "The rigorous exam and certification criteria provide assurance to our patients that we are well trained and capable of providing good service."
Tying for second place scorers in the 2001 ABFPRS examination were Drs. Ali R. Namazie and J. Madison Clark. Dr. Namazie, a graduate of the UCLA School of Medicine, recently completed a fellowship with Gregory S. Keller, MD, in Santa Barbara, Calif. He currently practices with an otolaryngology group with offices in Glendale and Los Angeles, Calif., but looks forward to building a practice focusing on aesthetic surgery. Dr. Clark's fellowship was with Drs. Ted A. Cook and Tom D. Wang in Portland, Ore. He recently took a position as an assistant professor of facial plastic surgery at the University of South Carolina in Charleston.
Third place honors were shared by Brian S. Jewett, MD, of Miami, Fla., and Jeffrey R. Raval, MD, of Denver. Dr. Jewett took the ABFPRS exam as a completion requirement for his fellowship with Shan R. Baker, MD. Dr. Raval was a fellow of Drs. Robert L. Simons and Richard E. Davis.
Application forms for the 2002 ABFPRS certification cycle are available online only.
