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Doctors 'Cheating' On Board Certifications

Posted by Soulskill on from the bad-handwriting-a-convenient-excuse dept.

Maximum Prophet writes "After taking board exams, doctors have been routinely getting together to remember and reproduce as much of the exam as they can. These notes are then bound and reproduced. According to the American Board of Dermatology, the exams are protected by copyright laws, and any reproduction not approved by the board is illegal. While I have no doubt that the Board believes this, and pays lawyers to believe it as well, I don't think they understand copyright. Perhaps they should invest in better testing methods."

9 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. IT Certificate by anti11es · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Keep it up and getting your MD degree will be worth about as much as most IT certificates. You can buy copies of most of those tests online from companies that somehow steal the cert test, probably using the same method these doctors are.

    1. Re:IT Certificate by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Uh, there's this thing called Residency, which is a big difference compared to IT work...

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    2. Re:IT Certificate by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Uh, there's this thing called Residency, which is a big difference compared to IT work...

      Yeah, you get treated like children and work 80 hours a week and get little pay when doing residency.
      IT interns get treated like slaves and workd 100 hours a week and often get no pay.

    3. Re:IT Certificate by solidraven · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And this is why it's fun to live in a European country with public healthcare with excellent coverage and small waiting times. Sure we pay a bit extra in income tax to support it, but it's totally worth it when you get sick.

    4. Re:IT Certificate by semi-extrinsic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's true that we pay a bit more in income tax, in total. But if you look at it another way, you realize that americans spend way more than we do on healthcare, and they live shorter lives with a lower quality of life:

      OECD data show that in 2008, the US paid 16 percent of GDP in total health care costs, public and private combined. This resulted in a life expectancy of 78.3 years, and the US is ranked 12th on the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index.

      Same data for Norway show that in 2008, we paid 8.5 percent of GDP in total health care costs. We spent half as much! But our lives are 2.5% longer (80.2 years life expectancy), and we are ranked 1st on the IHDI.

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  2. this is a sign that the overall school / testing n by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    this is a sign that the overall school / testing needs change and new ways to learn / test people. We need more apprenticeships / trades learning system and less end less classroom with test that people who can cram can pass and get rid of tests that have little to do with the real job.

  3. Why not an NDA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Copyright is a dumb way to protect a test.

    A much simpler and easier way would simply be for the AMA to have test takers agree to a very simple NDA. You agree not to share specific questions from this test with anyone. Covers the actual problem, is enforceable, doesn't require twisting copyright law in crazy ways. What's the downside?

  4. Summary fails copyright law by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the exam is copyrighted, and as the story states each question is reproduced "verbatim" and then reproduced, that is unquestionably a violation of Federal copyright law. /. needs to avoid publishing nonsense from people who clearly never went to law school.

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  5. Re:MD degree is to long and the school mindset may by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bullshit is entirely subjective. I know engineers who are focused on engineering to the extent that they know (and care) nothing about anything else. So maybe you have a point. People like that do the bare minimum work necessary to pass their out-of-major courses and retain nothing. Maybe it's not worth teaching some people anything but what they will most predictably use in their career.

    But a doctor is more than a technician. He or she is in the business of caring for people. A one-dimensional engineer might be competent and get the job done, but he might lack in creativity -- I know plenty like that. A one-dimensional doctor doesn't understand his patients. He doesn't understand that two patients with the same disease may express themselves in very different ways or that two patients that *say* the same thing about their condition may be describing different systems. He may not understand the psychological aspects of living with disease. Etc.

    The more a doctor knows about PEOPLE, the better it enables him to practice MEDICINE.

    To some extent, the same is true of engineers and programmers. You might know how to perform a certain task, but where do you learn to understand what customers want? They sure to hell don't teach that in your engineering classes and it damn sure is important to know.