Message from the Chair
It is my pleasure to be serving my second year in a two-year term as chair of the Vascular Surgery Board (VSB). I joined the VSB in 2017, and it has been one of the most important roles of my career thus far.
The VSB continues to fulfill its mission to serve patients, society, and the specialty of vascular surgery by providing leadership in surgical education and practice.
The VSB ensures excellence through:
- building a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture;
- rigorous evaluation and assessment;
- promoting the highest standards for professionalism, lifelong learning, and continuous certification of vascular surgeons in practice.
Until I became a director of the VSB, I didn’t realize the full depth and scope of the responsibilities and all that the board does for the specialty of vascular surgery.
For example, did you know that all major national and regional vascular societies are represented on the VSB? This includes:
- Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS)
- Association of Program Directors in Vascular Surgery (APDVS)
- Midwestern Vascular Surgical Society (MVSS)
- Vascular & Endovascular Surgery Society (VESS)
- Southern Association for Vascular Surgery (SAVS)
- Eastern Vascular Society (EVS)
- New England Society for Vascular Surgery (NESVS)
- Western Vascular Society (WVS)
- Society for Clinical Vascular Surgery (SCVS)
A significant part of the work of the VSB is engagement with our diplomates and our partner organizations, especially vascular surgery societies. Since 2022, VSB directors have been elected, generally by nomination from one of the above societies, through a competency-based nomination process. We are an independent board within the structure of the ABS and we are governed solely by active vascular surgeons.
For example, the VSB has primary authority over:
- approval of the blueprint by which exam content is determined;
- the writing of all exam content; and
- the content of the Vascular Surgery Qualifying Exam (VSQE), the Vascular Surgery Certifying Exam (VSCE), the Vascular Surgery In-Training Exam (VSITE), and the Vascular Surgery Continuous Certification Assessment (CCA).
At this juncture, when there are some discussions about whether it would be better for the profession and the patients to have a board that is entirely separate from the ABS, it is important to understand what the VSB relationship to the ABS is, and how the ABS supports vascular surgery.
The VSB is an independent board within the structure of the ABS and, for at least the past seven years, is no longer governed by general surgery. Vascular surgeons comprise the membership of the VSB and select new directors from active vascular surgeons in practice. These leaders in vascular surgery set the relation to the societies, set the strategic direction of the board, and define the scope of the profession through the work on the blueprint and exam development. The infrastructure that facilitates all of this essential work is provided by the organization of the ABS.
Current and former VSB directors have a significant role in ABS leadership, including holding several seats on both the Council of the ABS and the ABS Board of Directors. Multiple chairs of the governing board have come from the ranks of vascular surgery, including most recently Drs. Spence Taylor (2018-2019), K. Craig Kent (2019-2020), and Ash Mansour (2023-2024).
The relationship between the ABS and the VSB is of significant value for a multitude of reasons. For one, the collaboration with other specialties within the ABS creates the opportunity for mutual learning across specialties, so that best practices and new ideas can be shared among us, and the work of learning and developing new programs can be done with a wider swath of experienced and interested surgeons than would be possible for any one specialty alone.
For example, the exciting progress we have made in moving to competency-based assessment and education for trainees was significantly supported by both ABS writ large and the expertise of a cadre of surgeons of multiple specialties who experts in the field. Similarly, the other specialty boards of the ABS, (pediatric surgery, surgical critical care, and complex general surgical oncology) will learn from our experience.
The VSB relationship with the ABS also allows for economies of scale and cost benefits that would otherwise be unattainable, including negotiating with our exam development and delivery platforms and vendors, and IT infrastructure. This relationship was critical when we had to pivot to the virtual certifying exam format, which would have been extraordinarily difficult to accomplish without the aid of the infrastructure of the ABS. In addition, we have the full support of ABS’s superb group of Ph.D. psychometricians, exam development, and exam logistics and operations, not to mention the benefit of the long history of relationships with important organizations in certification such as the ACGME and the ABMS.
While the ABS provides an infrastructure, vascular surgery is also independently represented on the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s (ACGME) Review Committee for Surgery (RCS), which gives us a seat at the table when program requirements that might impact vascular surgery training are discussed. Similarly, the VSB collectively with the ABS has a larger voice at the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) than vascular surgery would alone.
I am proud to share with you that the VSB has been able to accomplish a tremendous amount in the past few years, including positive impacts on resident education and training. In my next chair’s message, I will share these in more detail. Until then…keep doing the amazing work that you are doing in caring for our patients with vascular disease.
Sincerely,
Kellie R. Brown, M.D.
VSB Chair 2023-2025