The American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIMs) competency-based pilot in internal-medicine cardiology may offer an opportunity for a paradigm shift in graduate medical education training of future cardiovascular specialists, according to a Fellows in Training/Early Career column published Sept. 10 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Zain Ul Abideen Asad, MD, and Cole Tunnell, MD, describe their overwhelmingly positive experience with this piolet pathway, which allowed them to stay in the same institution for both internal-medicine residency and cardiology fellowship training while beginning the core training experiences in cardiology several months earlier.

“Reducing the total duration of training while still producing well-trained cardiologists should be our future goal,” they write.

In a response to the column, Julie B. Damp, MD, FACC, comments that “as cardiology grows in complexity, it is imperative that we determine how to utilize our resources as effectively as possible.” She adds, “We must embrace and invest in competency-based cardiology training and lead in the innovation of medical education.”