Urologist Credentials Explained

Credentials are the one part of choosing a surgeon that a patient can verify against a primary source in minutes. They are also the part most often blurred in marketing: a society badge, a “center of excellence” logo and a board certificate can sit side by side on a practice website while meaning very different things. This guide explains each credential this site recognizes, how to confirm it independently, and which common claims are not credentials at all. It pairs with How to Choose a Penile Implant Surgeon, which covers volume, outcomes and the consultation checklist.

The three credentials at a glance

Descriptions are limited to what the cited organizations publish. “Does not show” means the credential does not on its face establish it.

American Board of Urology certification

The ABU certifies urologists in the United States. According to its published requirements, an applicant needs a degree from an LCME-accredited medical school or a COCA-accredited osteopathic school and a minimum of five clinical postgraduate years. The first year is in an approved surgical or urology program. The remaining four years must be in an ACGME-approved urology program, including at least 12 months as chief resident, with at least 48 months dedicated to urology.³

Certification then has two examination stages. Applicants must pass a qualifying examination (Part 1) and a certifying examination (Part 2), with no more than three attempts at each. Before the Part 2 examination the applicant must hold an unrestricted medical license, submit practice logs and acceptable peer review, and meet a 16-month practice requirement in a single community. Candidates have six years from the end of residency to complete the components.²

Maintenance: why an old certificate is not enough

The ABU's continuing certification program (Continuing Urologic Certification, CUC) runs in continuous five-year cycles. It replaced the ten-year recertification examination in February 2024 and is described by the board as built to ABMS requirements. The board states that while a urologist is actively participating, the certificate does not expire; a diplomate who falls out of compliance is shown as not certified until the outstanding activities are completed.⁴ That is why verification should confirm current status rather than a certificate year on a wall or a website.

What ABU certification does not cover

ABU certification is a general urology credential. The board's subspecialty page lists Pediatric Urology and Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery; it does not list a certificate in sexual medicine, andrology, male infertility or prosthetic urology.⁵ Be cautious, therefore, with any claim of “board-certified in men's sexual health” or similar: the verifiable board credential is in urology, and the subspecialty training shows up as a fellowship, not as a board certificate.

How to verify ABU certification yourself

Route 1: the ABU's own physician verification page

The board publishes a free search at abu.org/physician-verification. The search form asks for a partial name, or a city and state.¹ When we tested it on November 1, 2026, a result listed the physician's name and location, original certification year, certification type, subspecialty certification, certificate expiration date, diplomate status and whether the physician was compliant with the board's ongoing-learning requirements (shown as “LLL/CUC Compliant”). Read three fields: the diplomate status should read active, the compliance field should read compliant, and the certification type should be urology.

Route 2: ABMS Certification Matters

The American Board of Medical Specialties runs certificationmatters.org, a free service that shows whether a doctor is certified by any of its 24 member boards. The ABU itself points patients to it.^6,8 The form requires the first two or more letters of the last name; first name, state and specialty are optional. The site's FAQ explains the statuses a result can show: certified and actively maintaining certification, certified but not actively maintaining, no longer certified, suspended, revoked, and retired. It also shows first-certified and most-recent certification dates.⁸

Three limits are worth knowing. Patients can run up to 15 searches in a rolling 24 hours. The location shown is the last address the board received and may be out of date. And the data are updated from the boards periodically, so very recent changes may not appear.⁸ We reviewed the site's published rules and search form for this guide; the ABU's own page is the route we tested end to end.

If you cannot find the surgeon

• Try a shorter last name or remove the state; searches can fail on spelling, name changes or an outdated location.
• The doctor may not be certified by an ABMS member board, may have asked the board to keep the listing private, or may have certified within the last 90 days, when the listing may not yet be available.⁸
• The ABU states that a urologist who is board eligible but not yet certified is not listed with ABMS.⁶ Ask the surgeon directly which of these applies.
• Written primary-source verification exists for credentialing, but the ABU directs patients to the free ABMS lookup instead of its $50 written service for third parties.⁶
• Complaints about a certified urologist are directed by the ABU to the state medical board, which is also where a license and any disciplinary history are held.⁶

Board-certified versus board-eligible

Board eligibility describes a physician who has finished training but has not yet earned certification. ABMS policy states that it applies only to the period before initial certification, that each member board sets the parameters (for initial specialty certification the expiration must fall between three and seven years after completing accredited training), and that a physician whose eligibility has lapsed must stop making the claim.⁷ For a patient, the practical reading is simple: a surgeon several years out of residency who still describes themselves as “board eligible” should be asked what happened to the examinations. Board eligible is not a lesser form of board certified; it is a different status, and it does not appear in the ABMS lookup.

SMSNA membership: what it means and what it does not

The Sexual Medicine Society of North America is the professional society for clinicians and researchers in sexual medicine. Its published membership categories include Active, Affiliate, APP/Allied Health, Corresponding, Mental Health, Senior, and Student/Resident/Research Fellow.⁹ Active membership is described as open to MD, DO or PhD holders living in the US or Canada who have an interest in sexual medicine practice or research. It carries membership in the International Society for Sexual Medicine and journal access.⁹

The eligibility statement names a degree, a location and an interest. It does not mention board certification, fellowship training, procedure volume or an examination. Membership therefore signals engagement with the field; it does not prove skill, and it is not a safety standard. Affiliate and Corresponding members, for example, lack voting privileges and may include nurses, physician assistants and social workers, so the category matters as much as the word “member.”⁹ SMSNA's published category list does not include a category named “Associate,” although it is the term used in our own standard (see below).

Andrology and sexual medicine fellowships

A fellowship is a period of training after urology residency, focused here on male reproductive and sexual medicine. Because it is training rather than board certification, there is no board examination result to look up. SMSNA's fellowship page lists programs the society has endorsed in two groups, SMSNA Select programs, which recruit directly, and programs that fill positions through a match.¹¹ The page describes these programs as endorsed by SMSNA and does not name an outside accrediting body. The listed programs differ: one university program states that its one-year fellowship is overseen and accredited by SMSNA,¹² while another describes a two-year fellowship filled through the AUA Andrology Match.¹³

We did not find a single registry, accreditation body or database that lists every andrology, male reproductive medicine or sexual medicine fellowship and the physicians who completed them. SMSNA's endorsed list is the closest public resource we located, and it is an endorsement list, not a roster of graduates.

How to confirm a fellowship

1. Ask the surgeon for the program name, institution, director and the start and end years.
2. Find that program on the institution's own website, and check whether it is on SMSNA's endorsed list.
3. Contact the program office and ask whether it can confirm that the surgeon completed the fellowship and in which years.
4. Check the surgeon's residency in the same way: the ABU requires an ACGME-approved urology program, so the training chain should be checkable end to end.³

What is NOT a credential

These can all be sincere and still tell you nothing about a surgeon's training or results.

• Patient reviews and star ratings. They measure experience of service, are unaudited, and cannot be tied to implant outcomes such as infection or revision.
• “Center of excellence” branding. The term has no single definition. One device manufacturer's “Center of Excellence” designation, for example, has published criteria of a minimum implant count, a practice website, a docuseries and educational programs; it lists no outcome measure.¹⁴
• Device-company “preferred surgeon” or locator lists. The same manufacturer's physician database states that it does not verify or monitor listed physicians' licenses, credentials, accreditations or qualifications, that inclusion is not an endorsement, and that absence does not mean a physician is unqualified.¹⁴
• Membership databases. The American Urological Association's “Find a Urologist” is a listing of members; the ABU notes that it is not an endorsement and does not establish ABU certification.⁶
• Society attendance, committee roles and conference faculty slots. These show participation. They are not training or certification.
• Media appearances, podcasts and “top doctor” lists. Appearance reflects visibility, not training, and none of it can be verified against a primary source.
• Before-and-after galleries and procedure counts on a website. Selected, unaudited and not comparable. See the consultation checklist for how to test volume claims.

The credential standard this site uses

The directory behind this site is not yet live, and no surgeon is currently listed. When listings open, a surgeon will be listed only if they hold at least one of the following, each independently verifiable:

1. Board certification by the American Board of Urology.
2. Active or associate membership in the Sexual Medicine Society of North America.
3. A dedicated fellowship in andrology or male reproductive medicine.

The full wording, and what the directory excludes, is on the credential standard page. A listing will mean that a credential has been verified, not that a surgeon is the best choice for a particular patient; apply the checks above, and the checklist in How to Choose a Penile Implant Surgeon, to any surgeon you consider, listed or not. For the procedures a verified surgeon would perform, see inflatable penile prosthesis, malleable penile prosthesis and Peyronie's disease reconstruction.

Questions to ask your surgeon about credentials

• Which board certified you in urology, in what year, and may I look you up while we talk?
• Did you complete a fellowship? Which program, which years, and who directed it?
• Which SMSNA membership category do you hold, and do you hold any designation beyond membership?
• Which of your credentials are issued by an examining board, and which are society or company designations?
• If you describe yourself as board eligible, when do you expect to complete certification?

Sources

1. American Board of Urology. Primary source physician verification (search by partial name, or by city and state). abu.org/physician-verification. Search tested November 1, 2026.
2. American Board of Urology. Initial certification: qualifying (Part 1) and certifying (Part 2) examinations. abu.org/initial-certification
3. American Board of Urology. Residency requirements. abu.org/residency-requirements
4. American Board of Urology. Continuing Urologic Certification (CUC). abu.org/cuc
5. American Board of Urology. Subspecialty certification. abu.org/subspecialty-certification
6. American Board of Urology. Professional verification; Information for patients; Value of board certification. professional verification, information for patients, value of board certification
7. ABMS Solutions. ABMS board eligibility policy. abmssolutions.com
8. American Board of Medical Specialties. ABMS Certification Matters: FAQs on board certification. certificationmatters.org/faqs
9. Sexual Medicine Society of North America. Membership categories and fees. smsna.org/membership/categories-fees
10. Sexual Medicine Society of North America. SMSNA Fellow criteria. smsna.org/membership/smsna-fellow
11. Sexual Medicine Society of North America. Fellowship programs (SMSNA Select and match-participating programs). smsna.org/fellowship
12. University of Washington Department of Urology. Andrology fellowship program page. urology.uw.edu
13. Weill Cornell Medicine Department of Urology. Male reproductive medicine and surgery fellowship. urology.weill.cornell.edu
14. Boston Scientific. EDCure physician locator and AMS 700 Center of Excellence criteria, including listing disclaimers. edcure.com/us/en/find-a-specialist

Cost figures are ranges and editorial estimates unless a source above states otherwise. This article is educational and is not medical advice.