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Thinking of specializing your practice? Learn how ABIM’s subspecialty certifications work and can benefit you and your patients.
Staying current in medical knowledge is one of the most important things you'll do throughout your career. There's a lot of evidence for why this is important, both in foundational science and actual evidence, with data associated with patient care. Knowledge increases exponentially — what we know now will be dwarfed by what we know within just 10 years in the medical literature. Unfortunately, study after study has shown that our knowledge and skills decline over time, and unfortunately, self-assessment is very poor.
There's something called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a cognitive bias that leads us to believe we know more than we actually do. It’s important because the most competent people tend to underestimate their ability, but more importantly, unskilled people tend to overestimate their abilities.
That’s why it’s important to make sure you continue to learn and test yourself, even if you believe you’re at the top of your game.