Medical Examiners’ qualification is a key area in trucking. Safety on the road has been and will always be very important. As per the Transport Topics, physicians play a crucial role in making this possible. They ensure that the drivers are fit before they hit the road. FMCSA is working tirelessly to ensure that these physicians are up to the task. They have put in place plans to make the same happen.

Refresher Training

Refresher training is one of the areas FMCSA will focus. The training will be critical to ensure that the physicians are in line with the standards FMCSA needs. The training comes five years after the original certification. After every ten years, there will be a test to get a new certification again. The process had been on hold for a while. 

The National Registry

The National Registry had been down for a while now. It took almost four years to rebuild it. Its main work is to monitor the qualification of roughly 70,000 medical examiners. In turn, the examiners ensure that drivers are fit to be behind the wheel. The registry was under some threat. It had to be taken offline for a while. The same led to a rebuilding process to ensure it was secure. It took quite some while to rebuild it.

During the downtime, the medical examiners could not upload their exam results. They were still encouraged to take their exams. They also continued to assess the drivers to check for their fitness. Even after restoring the registry, there were concerns over its effectiveness. Therefore, there was no rush to upload the results. 

The five-year training and 10-year testing are now available. Medical examiners will now be able to upload proof of training. Now the practitioners will be certified and listed on the registry. It only comes after the completion of the refresher training and the certification. Initially, the technological shortcomings slowed things down. After restoration, FMCSA gave deadlines for the reports. 

An audit found some weaknesses in the processes of monitoring medical examiners. There were doubts related to the outage of the registry. The same could create loopholes in the monitoring process. That was the concern pointed out by the audit. The audit reported that many more licenses needed to be updated. FMCSA hopes that with the registry back up and running, everything will be sorted soon. Examiners will take the refresher training and do recertification tests every ten years. They will also update their records to ensure their qualification at all times.

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