This participation should be related to your current practice. We encourage you to find out what programs are available through your hospital. Many hospitals participate in national registry programs (see list below).
If there are no hospital-based or individual programs available to you, you may maintain a log of your own cases and morbidity outcomes utilizing the ACS Surgeon Specific Case Log System (with tracking of 30-day complications). We expect you to select a focused area of practice for practice assessment/quality improvement. You should identify an area of practice or types of procedures to study; define the measures to be assessed and goals of the activity; track patients’ outcomes; analyze the outcomes and compare them with the activity goals; and identify areas for improvement. Then you must reassess their performance after implementing changes to gauge improvement.
No paperwork/copies are required at this time, however the information is subject to audit to assure its validity and reliability.
Unethical and unprofessional behavior is denoted by any dishonest behavior, including: cheating; lying; falsifying information; misrepresenting one’s educational background, certification status and/or professional experience; and failure to report misconduct. The American Board of Colon and Rectal Surgery has adopted a “zero tolerance” policy toward these behaviors, and individuals caught exhibiting such behaviors risk being permanently barred from certification, reported to state medical boards, and/or legally prosecuted for copyright or other violations.
Unethical behavior is specifically defined by the ABCRS to include the disclosure, publication, reproduction or transmission of ABCRS examinations, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, verbal or written, electronic or mechanical, for any purposes. This also extends to sharing examination information or discussing an examination while still in progress. Unethical behavior also includes the possession, reproduction or disclosure of materials or information, including examination questions or answers or specific information regarding the content of the examination, before, during or after the examination. This definition specifically includes the recall and reconstruction of examination questions by any means and such efforts may violate federal copyright law. All ABCRS examinations are copyrighted and protected by law; the ABCRS will prosecute violations to the full extent provided by law and seek monetary damages for any loss of examination materials.
