This comprehensive examination is the first step in the certification process. The purpose of the examination is to determine whether the candidate demonstrates a minimum level of knowledge agreed by a panel of experts to be necessary for the safe practice of urology. The Board strives to provide an examination which reflects contemporary urologic core knowledge and practice, is fair to all candidates, and does not discriminate on the basis of region of training or practice, residency training program, or subtleties of examsmanship.

A resident may enter the certification process upon meeting the Board's pre-urology training requirements and completing at least six months of chief residency in an approved U.S. or Canadian program by June 30, 2012.

The Qualifying (Part 1) Examination is given annually as a computer-based examination in Pearson VUE testing centers throughout the United States. This examination is administered during one day, in two examination periods of 3 hours each with a break between.

Applications are mailed in mid-September to all residency programs and to eligible practitioners in the US and Canada, and will be available for download from this site at that time.  

The application and fee are due November 1, 2011.  Applications may be submitted with an additional $750.00 late fee until December 1, 2011  Chief residents only may defer payment of the fee until January 5, 2012.  

Program Director's evaluations of eligible residents must arrive in the Board office no later than March 1, 2012.

Candidates will be notified by the ABU once they have completed all requirements and can then register for the examination.

Approved candidates may take the examination on either July 26 or July 27, 2012.

Applications must be submitted on forms for the current examination cycle. Prior year forms are given for informational purposes only.  

To provide the Board with a notarized copy of a document, take the original document to a notary public. He or she will copy it and notarize the copy as a true copy of the original. Mail the notarized copy to the Board office; faxes or photocopies of documents will not be accepted.

Adobe Reader is required to view and print the documents listed below. Click on the button to the right to download the latest version of the free Adobe Reader.
Handbook for Applicants and Candidates
Information for Chief Residents
Qualifying Examination (Part 1) Application
Part 1 Computer-Based Testing Information and Tutorial
Pearson Testing Centers

The examination consists of 300 multiple-choice questions. Two hundred of these are previously tested questions which will be used to grade candidates on the examination. One hundred of these are new, field-test questions which are being evaluated and will not count toward the final grade. Candidates have up to four opportunities to complete the Qualifying (Part 1) Examination successfully before their five-year period of admissibility expires.

300 QUESTIONS

* 200 Qualifying Examination Questions
100 Field Test Questions
* Only these questions are used to score candidates on the examination

A committee of twenty urologic physicians with expertise in the various subspecialty areas of urology develops the examination component of the Qualifying process. Committee members are chosen with regard for the region of the country in which they practice as well as their subspecialty expertise, so that the committee reflects a comprehensive representation of urologic disciplines and regional practice variations.

The committee is composed of four subject-oriented task forces.

JOINT EXAMINATION COMMITTEE

Task Force A
Physiology, immunology, molecular biology, hypertension, transplantation,
sexual dysfunction, voiding dysfunction

Task Force B
Infections, inflammatory diseases, endocrinopathy,
calculus disease, trauma, obstructive uropathy, fertility

Task Force C
Neoplasms, urinary diversion, fistulae

Task Force D
Pediatric urology, anatomy, fluid and electrolyte disorders

Questions are generated by individual committee members, reviewed by the appropriate task force, and then presented to the entire Examination Committee for critique. Following the critique, questions are rewritten and presented to the group as many times as necessary to reach agreement on relevance, clarity, and the correct answer.

After a new question has been approved by the Examination Committee, it is included as a field test item in the Qualifying (Part 1) Examination along with previously tested questions which have met stringent criteria for inclusion as official graded questions.

Sample Question 1

During investigation for a urinary tract infection, a child is found to have a renal abscess in the upper pole of one kidney.  The child is febrile, has flank tenderness, but is clinically stable.  The most appropriate next step in management is:
(a) Surgical drainage
(b) Intravenous antibiotics
(c) Partial nephrectomy
(d) Percutaneous aspiration
(e) Nephrostomy placement

Sample Question 2

A 58-year-old man develops left flank pain. Excretory urography reveals a 1 cm radiolucent filling defect in the left renal pelvis associated with moderate hydronephrosis. After urinary alkalinization to a pH of 6.5 for 3 weeks, repeat excretory urography reveals no significant improvement. The next step in management should be:
(a) Percutaneous nephrostomy and bicarbonate infusion
(b) Abdominal CT scan
(c) Percutaneous nephrostolithotomy
(d) Intravenous urinary alkalinization
(e) Retrograde pyelogram

Sample Question 3

A disease identified by the presence of Donovan bodies and caused by an organism similar to klebsiella pneumonia is:
(a) Chancroid
(b) Granuloma inguinale
(c) Lymphogranuloma venereum
(d) Malacoplakia
(e) Cytomegalovirus

Following the examination, the question is statistically analyzed to determine if an appropriate percentage of candidates selected the correct answer, and whether these were the most capable candidates on the overall examination. A good performing question is one which discriminates between more able and less able candidates. A question meeting these stringent requirements may then be used on a subsequent Qualifying (Part 1) Examination as an official graded question. Questions which perform poorly and do not meet these requirements are either discarded or rewritten, reevaluated by the Examination Committee, and perhaps field tested again.

In order to ensure that the field test questions receive equivalent effort from the candidates, they cannot be identified as field test items. The field test items may create the misperception that the test over-emphasizes a given area or has too many difficult questions. Nevertheless, only the 200 tried and proven Qualifying (Part 1) Examination questions are counted in the final score. These 200 questions have met requirements of relevance, appropriate distribution of subject matter, and rigid statistical performance criteria.

The method used to determine a passing score on the Qualifying (Part 1) Examination is based on criterion reference testing. Criterion reference testing uses a benchmark examination to establish a performance which all candidates must meet. Examinations are compared to the benchmark standard and the passing score varies according to the difficulty. The probability of passing remains constant, and the examination process provides a uniform opportunity to pass from one year to the next. In theory, all who take the examination could pass; there is no mandatory failure rate. On average, approximately 90%of first-time examinees pass the examination.