ACCP-SEEK Board Review Question of the Month: A New Feature of Chest

Abstract

In 1990, the American College of Chest Physicians conceived the idea of the Assessment in Critical Care and Pulmonology: Self-Education and Evaluation of Knowledge (ACCP-SEEK) program. The goals of the program were four-fold: (1) to provide a self-assessment program for practicing specialists in pulmonary and critical care medicine designed to reinforce training and experience; (2) to disseminate important new knowledge in the field; (3) to assist both the practicing specialist and individuals in training in preparing for certification and recertification examinations sponsored by the medical specialty boards; and (4) to publish in alternating years practice specialty board question and answer booklets in pulmonary medicine and critical care medicine. Dr. John Weg was recruited as the first Chair of the ACCP-SEEK program with the charges of assembling committees of experts with diverse clinical interests, developing a self-education and evaluation program, and identifying an experienced and skilled medical examination publisher. He developed the format of 200 peer-reviewed questions of a type and quality similar to actual board examinations; each question would be followed by a peer-reviewed concise, thoughtful, critical, and occasionally controversial answer/discussion well supported by current references. American College Testing of Iowa City, Iowa initially acted as the publisher and provided psychometric support, including confidential reporting of each individual's score with comparison to his or her peers. ACCP-SEEK Volume 1: Pulmonary Medicine was published in 1991; Volume 4: Critical Care Medicine will be published before the end of 1994 by the ACCP. While the ACCP-SEEK program was initially designed as a continuing educational offering with continuing medical education (CME) credits and as a study aid for those individuals taking our specialty board examinations, it has turned out to be much more than that. Many have come to rely on the practice examination discussions/references as a reference source and the questions/discussions as an educational tool during regularly scheduled pulmonary and critical care medicine conferences and rounds. For all of these reasons, the editor-in-chief of Chest with the permission of the ACCP has decided to reproduce selected, previously published ACCP-SEEK questions and answers as a new special feature—ACCP-SEEK Board Review Question of the Month—that appears for the first time in this issue of Chest (see page 1289). Reader response to this concept is encouraged.