Residency and Board Certification in Obstetrics and Gynecology

Contents

1. Residency begins with the Match
2. Four supervised years make the specialist
3. Certification is a separate credential granted by examination
4. Continuing certification keeps the credential current

Candace Cooley did OB/GYN training for two years at Albany Medical Center Hospital, from 1994 to 1996, completed her residency at Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando, Florida, in 1998, and is certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Those are two separate achievements, and a common belief folds them into one: that a doctor who finishes a residency in a field is, by that fact alone, board certified in it. The belief is a fair one to hold. Residency is long, closely supervised and specific to the specialty, and no one can be certified without completing it. Yet the specialty board, known as ABOG, describes board certification as a voluntary and rigorous process with steps of its own, which begin only once accredited training is done.¹ The board presents the result as a credential that patients, employers and professional peers can rely on, showing command of the core knowledge and clinical judgment of the field.¹ Residency builds the specialist. Certification is a different credential, granted by a specialty board after examination.

Residency begins with the Match

The route into residency runs through a single day each spring. At Match Day, fourth year medical students learn where they will continue their training, an event the Times Union described at Albany Medical College in 2025 as a nationwide rite of passage.⁴ Students apply to several residency programs, the programs rank the students they have interviewed, and the National Resident Matching Program pairs the two lists.⁴ That year 123 Albany students received matches, and 40 percent of the class headed into primary care fields, a group the college counted as including obstetrics and gynecology.⁴ After medical school, the report noted, physicians spend another three to seven years in residency, and assignments begin in July.⁴ The Match runs in both directions: the same day, 128 graduates from schools across the country learned they would train at Albany Medical Center, whose filled programs that year included obstetrics and gynecology.⁴

The national pool is large and still growing. The AAMC’s annual Report on Residents counted 163,189 residents in the 2024 to 2025 academic year, about 4,000 more than the year before and the seventh straight year of growth.⁵ Specialty choice is less fixed than many assume: only 29.4 percent of graduating students who answered the AAMC questionnaire in 2025 named the same specialty preference at graduation that they had named on entering medical school.⁵ The pool is also broad in origin. International medical graduates made up 24.2 percent of active residents, and graduates of colleges of osteopathic medicine about 18.5 percent, or 30,163 trainees.⁵

Figure

Residents in the United States, 2024 to 2025

Medical residents in training in the 2024 to 2025 year

163,189

Share of obstetrics and gynecology residents who are women

88.8%

Graduating students who kept the specialty preference they started with

29.4%

Four supervised years make the specialist

Programs in the field typically run four years. The department at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, for example, offers 12 positions in its four year residency and describes the program as giving residents the experience essential to diagnosing and treating patients and to developing their own areas of focus.³ Its residents follow a rotation calendar, complete a senior research project, and may add a certificate program in one of four areas of focus.³

Supervision links the training years to the credential that may follow. For initial board certification, professional behaviors are assessed by program directors and attested to before the board grants the credential.² What program leaders see over those years thus feeds into a decision the board makes later and separately.

The specialty’s trainees have changed in makeup. In 2024 to 2025 women became a majority of all residents and fellows, at 50.2 percent, a first, and among obstetrics and gynecology trainees they accounted for 88.8 percent of residents, the highest share among the larger specialties the AAMC listed.⁵ Where residents train also shapes where they stay: of those who finished residency from 2015 through 2024, 55.7 percent were practicing in the state where they trained, and 20.9 percent held a full time faculty appointment at an American medical school.⁵ A training path like this one usually starts years earlier with an undergraduate science degree, as the entry on Binghamton University describes for one public campus.

Figure

The path to specialty certification

1. 01
   DegreeEarn an MD or DO degree from an accredited institution.
2. 02
   ResidencyComplete an accredited OB/GYN residency and meet eligibility requirements.
3. 03
   Qualifying examPass a written, computer based examination of foundational knowledge across obstetrics, gynecology and office practice.
4. 04
   Case listPrepare a case list from personal practice and apply for the certifying examination.
5. 05
   Certifying examPass an oral examination of clinical judgment built on structured cases and review of the case list.

Certification is a separate credential granted by examination

ABOG awards specialty certification in two examination steps. The first, the Qualifying Examination, is written and computer based, and it tests foundational knowledge across obstetrics, gynecology and office practice.¹ The second, the Certifying Examination, is an oral exam held at the board’s national center; it is built on structured cases and on a review of the candidate’s own practice as shown in a case list.¹ The board says its standards rest on periodic job task analyses, surveys of practicing specialists that keep the examinations matched to contemporary practice.¹ An alternate pathway exists for graduates of residency programs accredited by recognized international or osteopathic bodies.¹

The board itself is old. ABOG writes that it has certified obstetricians and gynecologists for nearly 100 years and helped found the umbrella organization of American specialty boards.² Its subspecialty certificates go back half a century, in areas that include cancers of the female reproductive organs and maternal fetal medicine, and a pelvic floor subspecialty, now called Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery, was added in 2018.²

What the credential means is spelled out with care. By the board’s account, passing tells patients and the specialty that the diplomate has reached and kept up competency, along with the expertise and professional conduct the defined field demands.² The board is equally plain about limits: its assessments are not designed to measure teaching, administration or other parts of academic medicine, and certification carries no authority to supervise or certify others.² The work the credential covers is surveyed in the entry on obstetrics and gynecology as a specialty.

Continuing certification keeps the credential current

Certification is not a single event. ABOG assesses ongoing professionalism through its continuing certification process, often called maintenance of certification or MOC.² How physicians experience that process has now been measured. A study summarized in the continuing education Almanac surveyed OB/GYN physicians nationwide in November and December 2024.⁶ Of 449 respondents, 62.8 percent said MOC was worth the time it took and 77.8 percent said it was relevant to caring for their patients, and a majority said it supported professional development, lifelong learning and patient safety.⁶ At the same time, 46 percent called it burdensome.⁶

Figure

How OB/GYNs rated continuing certification

• Relevant to caring for patients77.8
• Worth the time spent62.8
• Burdensome46

percent

The respondents also said what they would change. Their suggestions included a longer recertification cycle, revising or dropping the practice improvement and chart review activities, and allowing other formats, such as videos, podcasts or meeting attendance, to earn dual credit.⁶ Support for stretching the cycle was substantial, with 61.8 percent favoring a two year cycle and 46 percent a three year one.⁶ The next step for research is to test those ideas: whether a longer cycle or a different format keeps the value physicians report while easing the load they describe. None of this bears on the care of any single patient, and each woman’s own decisions are best worked through with a clinician familiar with her history.