Development and Growth of a Large Multispecialty Certification Examination: Sleep Medicine Certification—Results of the First Three Examinations

Sleep medicine certification for physicians in Spain

“…At present, there is a lack of standardisation and the quality of clinical decisions may vary widely. The best way to resolve this problem is to establish a procedure for certification, for both centres and physicians [1]. However, the implementation of a procedure of this kind is difficult, for a variety of reasons; for example, the wide range of criteria applied by different professional societies and the apparent perception that sleep diseases belong to different medical specialties.…”

“…To date, several procedures have been developed to perform the certification process. In some countries, for instance, the USA [1][2][3], sleep medicine is considered an independent medical subspecialty, and in Germany [4,5] and Saudi Arabia [6], its status as a subspecialty has been officially acknowledged. In other countries, expertise is certified by scientific societies or academic institutions.…”

“…According to the guidelines of the British Thoracic Society (BTS), "no underlying lung disease" is based on history, physical examination and chest radiography [1].…”