Hi, I'm so pleased to be with you today to talk a little bit about board certification in the field of medical genetics and genomics, what trainings are required and what you can do with this certification. I want to spend just a couple of seconds on how I got into the field. I was a chemistry undergrad and through a meandering path ended up in a graduate program in human genetics, but really heard about this kind of training and what opportunities were there for PhDs to do clinical lab work from my mentor. My mentor was an MD, a clinical geneticist, but also focused on inborn errors of metabolism. And when I started to get trained and heard about this specialty, it was the best thing ever and I couldn't, I never looked back. I am a clinical biochemical geneticist for many years, directed a diagnostic laboratory and have spent the rest of my career in teaching, mentoring, and now working for the board. I have no conflicts of interest to report. I'd like to start with just what the mission of the ABMGG is. The board's mission is to serve the public and medical profession by establishing professional certification standards and promoting lifelong learning and excellence in medical genetics and genomics. Our purpose is to make sure that the clinical geneticists and the laboratory geneticists are competent to do their jobs and serve the public well. The ABMGG is an independent medical board. We were created in 1980 to certify medical geneticists, both the clinicians and the laboratory geneticists with specialized education and clinical skills in this specialty. Exactly 30 years ago, we were accepted as one of the member boards of a federation, the American Board of Medical Specialties. This is an organization of all of the recognized medical specialties like internal medicine, family medicine, PEDS, OBGYN, and we sit at the table with them as a recognized medical board. Many of us speak in alphabet soup. We talk about our own organizations and others, so I just want to make sure that you're straight on which we are. The ABMGG, the board, that's us, set the standards a trainee must meet in order to be admitted and be able to sit for the certification exam. We work closely with another organization that accredits the training programs and sets the standards for certification. We want to make sure that our requirements for certification are covered in the training programs, and we work closely to do that. The board develops and administers exams, including an in-training exam that fellows or residents take in their training and also the certifying exams. And then once you're certified, you continue in education. There's a continuous process to make sure that you maintain your competency in the field. The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, the ACGME, is who's sponsoring this meeting, the professional meeting. The ACMG is a membership-based professional society for our specialty. They provide the education and learning activities in medical genetics and genomics, and they are our advocates. They advocate for their members and fellows and the entire clinical profession. We work closely with them. One other group is the ACGME in Mount Fulton that accredits those residency and laboratory training programs. And again, the board works hand-in-hand with them. So the ABMGG certifies individuals in different primary specialties. Clinical genetics and genomics, which is for MDs. It's a residency program, and these are our MDs. Clinical biochemical genetics and laboratory genetics and genomics are two laboratory-based medical genetic specialties. LGG, or laboratory genetics and genomics, is actually relatively new, but it's a merged specialty of cytogenetics and molecular genetics, where we have certified diplomates for many years since 1981. But it is now merged into LGG, so we no longer give those separate exams. So let's just go through very briefly. If you decide you want to become a clinical geneticist out of medical school, you can enter what we call a categorical residency, a residency program. You have an MD, and you have to have at least one year of prior residency training to enter into the categorical program. The MGG residency programs are two years in length, and many individuals actually decide to do this residency after they've completed a residency in another specialty, although that's not a requirement. We also excitedly have combined residencies for MDs. These are four-year training programs in which you complete the requirements for a genetics residency and the other specialty. And once you complete this, you'll be eligible to sit for the board exams in clinical genetics, but also in that other specialty as listed here, peds, internal medicine, maternal fetal medicine, and reproductive endocrinology and infertility. On this slide, you can just see how many residency programs there are. There are 47 categorical residency programs out there, those that are two years in length. But we also have a significant number of combined residency training programs, which are quite exciting, and we are urging people to look into these and consider the fact that you could be boarded in both. I'm going to mention that we have a subspecialty for those individuals who've completed their residency in genetics. A number of residents or a number of clinicians go on to do a one-year training subspecialty or fellowship training in medical biochemical genetics, where they can focus their career and get more of an experience in the management and diagnosis of patients with inherited metabolic disorders. From the lab specialty standpoint, we have two specialties, biochemical genetics and laboratory genetics and genomics. These require a doctoral-level degree, and these are...then you would need to complete a two-year accredited training program in one of these two specialties. These are the numbers of programs throughout the United States that are available. They are pretty competitive. You've heard about them a bit, but hopefully, you will find these as exciting as I did to spend my career in. After you complete training, what happens? You go through...you have to get accepted into a residency or fellowship program, complete your training. Subsequent to that, you are considered board eligible. You've successfully completed a program, you haven't passed the boards yet, but that's what your title would be. And when you pass your boards, you become board certified or what we call a diplomate of ABMGG. You can also apply for membership in the college and become a fellow in the college, which is somebody who is a diplomate who belongs to the college. Just to give you a sense of where we stand, all of this is on the ABMGG website. You can see the number of individuals that we certified in the past several years. We give our exams every two years, so 2021, we're giving our exams in August of this year. There were over 100 new clinical geneticists, MD clinical geneticists that were certified in 19, and you can see the different specialties here. We gave the first LGG exam in 2019, so you'll see there's only 20 there, but a lot still taking the cytome and molecular. There'll be over 100 people taking it in LGG in 2021. Our website, our website is abmgg.org, easy to find, and it should be, if you have any questions or interest, this is where you should go. But the place to get, if you're thinking about this as a profession or if you're a current trainee, the place to look is here under training and certification. It comes with a dropdown menu that you can see here, where you can see training options, which describes all of the different pathways I mentioned. There are, it's a list of all the accredited programs and the contact information for these laboratory or residencies that are around the US. If you're a foreign medical graduate, if you are a foreign graduate, there's instructions on how to get your credentials reviewed, and there's a lot of information about the specialty. So I urge you to go there. If you have any particular questions at our website, you can find the link that says contact us, but certainly be able to do that at any time. Our staff is willing to speak to you about this, as am I, at any time if you want to make an appointment. So contact abmgg at abmgg.org, or you can contact me. My information is there as well, and I look forward to meeting you after these presentations in small groups. Thanks very much. Thank you.

board certification

medical genetics

genomics

certification standards

residency programs