OB-1T Certification

What This Credential Actually Is

OB-1T is the label this site uses for the Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Obstetrics/First Trimester Certification, issued through the Point-of-Care Ultrasound Certification Academy, part of Inteleos. It is a standalone clinical certificate for healthcare professionals who perform bedside ultrasound in early pregnancy. The identifier is a retained site label rather than an issuer-assigned exam code, and it is not a post-nominal you add after your name.

Scope matters here. This certification covers first-trimester scanning only. It is not OB Essentials, not a second- or third-trimester credential, not the Maternal Fetal Health specialty bundle, and not an RDMS OB/GYN pathway. If you are still sorting out terminology, our explainers on what OB-1T certification is and what OB-1T stands for cover the naming in more depth.

The delivery model is also distinctive. The Academy administers everything online through myPOCUS and its learning management system, so there is no testing-center appointment. Candidates sign a confidentiality and nondisclosure agreement, and the Academy's FAQ allows you to stop and resume online assessments, which changes how you can pace a sitting compared with a traditional proctored exam.

Eligibility and Prerequisites

Before you can purchase and begin, you need to satisfy several requirements. The full walkthrough lives in our OB-1T requirements guide, but the core elements are:

• Professional standing: a healthcare professional in good standing and actively practicing in the relevant clinical area.
• Case attestation: you attest to having performed and participated in the interpretation of at least 25 obstetrics/first-trimester POCUS cases within the preceding 2 years.
• Mixed scanning approaches: the handbook and issuer FAQ require a combination of transvaginal and transabdominal scanning within those 25 cases.
• Peer evaluators: you must provide at least 2 healthcare-provider peer evaluators with an ultrasound clinical background who know your relevant scanning abilities.
• POCUS Fundamentals: required unless waived by an SPI examination passed within 5 years or a current qualifying ARDMS/APCA credential.

The Fundamentals prerequisite has a nuance worth understanding. Fundamentals itself does not expire, but program policy separately requires you to earn your first content-specific certificate within 3 years of completing Fundamentals, or reapply for Fundamentals. That restriction is a progression rule, not a 3-year expiry of the Fundamentals credential, and it no longer applies once you have earned and appropriately maintained a content-specific certificate.

The Two Components: Case Assessment and Peer Evaluation

The structure of this credential is what separates it from a typical multiple-choice certification. There are two components, and you must pass both.

Clinical Case Assessment

The assessment consists of 7 simulated clinical cases, as described by the Inteleos-issued badge. That figure is a case count, not a question count. Within each clinical scenario you will encounter multiple-choice items and interactive image-hotspot questions, where you identify a structure or finding directly on an ultrasound image rather than selecting a text option.

No fixed current total question count, numeric passing mark, or credential-specific pass rate was verified in the public sources reviewed, and we do not infer one from the case total. If you want to see how we treat that gap, read our pages on the OB-1T passing score and the OB-1T pass rate.

Peer Evaluation

The Peer Evaluation is a separate assessment of your practical abilities, completed by the peers you nominate. It scores seven evenly weighted criteria:

1. Diagnostic Quality
2. Gain
3. Depth
4. Views
5. Measurement
6. Pathology
7. M-Mode

Notice what these criteria reward: knob-level technique. Gain and Depth are image-optimization skills, Measurement covers sizing structures such as the gestational sac and crown-rump length, and M-Mode relates to documenting cardiac activity. The first 2 completed peer questionnaires determine your peer result, so choose evaluators who have actually watched you scan and who will complete the questionnaire promptly.

How the Five Domains Are Weighted

The official content outline lists five weighted objectives for the Clinical Case Assessment. These weights total 100% for that assessment only, not for the full two-component credential. The outline is a current program-linked one-page PDF with no printed revision date or examination version, so confirm it on the issuer's site before you finalize a plan. For deeper coverage of each area, see our complete guide to all five OB-1T content areas.

Domain 5 carries only 4% of the weight, but the pathologies it names recur inside the cases that populate Domains 3 and 4. Do not skip it because of the small percentage; the same conditions will appear as the diagnostic backbone of the scenarios.

Pathology Distinctions You Cannot Blur

The issuer publishes a list of pathology examples, and it is explicitly non-exhaustive. The published examples are:

• Complete abortion
• Definitive pregnancy failure
• Early pregnancy
• Ectopic pregnancy
• Heterotopic pregnancy
• Incomplete abortion
• Single and multiple intrauterine gestation
• Molar pregnancy
• Ovarian torsion
• Possible pregnancy failure

Two distinctions deserve special attention because the issuer keeps them as separate categories.

Here is an original teaching scenario, not a live exam item. A patient presents with pelvic pain and a positive pregnancy test, and your scan shows no gestational sac inside the uterus. The interpretive question is not simply "is this ectopic?" but "what do my sonographic findings support, and what do they leave uncertain?" Candidates who rush from a missing sac to a firm diagnosis can lose points on exactly the kind of Domain 4 reasoning the assessment emphasizes. Heterotopic pregnancy, an intrauterine gestation coexisting with an ectopic one, is a reminder that finding one pregnancy does not end the search.

For a compact reference to keep beside your notes, our OB-1T cheat sheet condenses the must-know facts into one page.

Fees, the 90-Day Window, and Retakes

Costs are straightforward but depend on whether you need Fundamentals. Our OB-1T certification cost breakdown goes further, but the verified figures are:

The 90-day completion window

You must complete both components within 90 days of purchase. This is an access and completion window, not a timed examination sitting, a practical-assessment duration, or a course-hour requirement. Because the Peer Evaluation depends on other people responding, the practical risk is not the case assessment but evaluator delays. Contact your peers before you purchase so the questionnaires are not the bottleneck. For scheduling specifics, see our page on OB-1T exam dates and deadlines.

Retake policy

• You get 2 total content-specific assessment attempts before a 1-year waiting period applies.
• A 30-day wait follows an unsuccessful attempt.
• A retake application and fee are required; the fee amount was not verified, so check the issuer's current policy.
• Apply for the retake within 90 days of failure.
• Any component you initially passed is retained for your first retake application, so you do not repeat what you already cleared.

That last point is strategically useful. If you pass the Peer Evaluation but miss the case assessment, your retake focuses on the cases alone.

Sequencing Your Prep Around the Weights

The one place a schedule genuinely helps is aligning your time to the domain weights. The sequence below is an original suggestion, not an issuer requirement, and it assumes you have already arranged your peer evaluators. For a longer plan, see our OB-1T study guide.

If you want to gauge readiness with realistic case-style items, you can try the practice questions on the OB-1T practice test site. Candidates often wonder about difficulty before committing; our analysis of how hard the OB-1T exam is addresses that candidly.

Validity and Renewal

The certification is valid for 5 years. Clinical renewal at the 5-year mark requires:

• An attestation of active practice and good standing.
• The relevant knowledge check.
• A USD 50 fee.

Specialty-only professional-development points do not apply to this individual clinical certification. The issuer's policies and maintenance pages differ on specialty point totals, so we do not import any such total into this clinical scope. If you are tracking renewal obligations, the Academy's maintenance-of-certification page is the authoritative source.

Who Benefits From This Certification

Early-pregnancy POCUS is relevant wherever clinicians evaluate first-trimester complaints such as bleeding or pain at the bedside. That commonly includes emergency medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, urgent care, and primary care settings with a focus on women's health, among other roles. Whether the credential changes your compensation depends on your role and employer, and we do not claim a credential-specific pay increase. Our role-based discussions in the OB-1T salary guide, the ROI analysis, and the page on OB-1T jobs take that cautious approach.

Frequently Asked Questions