What ABA Board Certification Actually Requires: The Path Jordan Benjamin Smith Took

“Board certified” turns up on physician profiles constantly, and few patients could tell you what it means. Jordan Benjamin Smith, a board-certified anesthesiologist who practices in Florida and New York, makes a useful case study in what the phrase actually covers. Dr. Jordan Smith, MD, earned his certification from the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA) in 2024, at the end of a training path that ran through two states.

Patients often take “board certified” to mean licensed, trained, or affiliated with a professional society, and it means none of those. It’s a separate credential layered on top of years of education and training, and it only makes sense once you see everything that comes before it and alongside it.

Certification Is the Last Step, Not the First

Before anything else, ABA board certification requires time. Nobody gets there directly, since it comes at the end of a long sequence and every earlier step has to be completed first. Understanding the order of those steps is the easiest way to see what the credential actually certifies.

For Jordan Smith, that sequence began with undergraduate degrees at the University of Florida. From there he went to medical school at Florida Atlantic University, earning his MD from the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine in 2017. Medical school alone took four years, and when it ended, he was a physician by title without yet being a specialist in anything.

That distinction matters for anyone trying to read a doctor’s credentials. An MD tells you someone completed medical school, but it says nothing about what they’re trained to do. Specialty board certification signals that a physician went further and completed the training for one specific field, in this case anesthesiology. The degree gets a doctor in the door, and the specialty training that follows is where the real preparation takes place.

How Jordan Benjamin Smith’s Training Built Toward Certification

Residency comes after medical school, with years of supervised clinical training that turn a new doctor into a specialist. During residency, a physician trains in the specific specialty they’ll eventually be certified in.

Dr. Jordan Smith, MD, began with a year of internal medicine residency at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He then attended anesthesiology residency at New York University in New York City, followed by completing anesthesiology training at Larkin Community Hospital in South Miami. From his first day of residency to the end of his training, the process spanned roughly four years.

Along the way he worked in academic, community, and high-volume urban hospitals in both Florida and New York. Each setting brings a different patient mix, and a physician who trains across several of them sees a wider range of cases and complications. That breadth points to something the words “board certified” tend to obscure, which is that the credential rests on years of hands-on clinical work. Certification recognizes that training, and it offers no shortcut around any of it.

Board Certification Is Not the Same as a Medical License

People frequently confuse board certification with a medical license. The two are separate credentials from separate bodies, and a physician holds each one independently of the other.

States issue medical licenses, and each state sets its own requirements for granting one. Jordan Smith holds active medical licenses in three states: Florida, New York, and California. Each license is its own credential, tied to the state that issued it. In Florida, for example, anyone can look up a physician through the Department of Health, and you can view his Florida license profile through that public search.

ABA board certification works another way, and no single state controls it. It comes from a national specialty board, the American Board of Anesthesiology, and it reflects specialty training instead of permission to practice in a particular place. A physician licensed in three states still holds just one ABA certification. When you check a doctor’s background, look for both, because each one answers a different question.

Certification Comes With an End Date

Many people also assume board certification lasts forever, and it doesn’t necessarily. Dr. Jordan Smith, MD’s ABA certification took effect on March 8, 2024, and it runs through December 31, 2029.

That end date deserves attention. It makes the credential time-limited, something a physician has to maintain after earning it. So when a profile says “board certified,” the more useful question is whether the certification is current today. A dated certification period gives patients and colleagues a concrete way to find out.

What Board Certification Doesn’t Cover

It also helps to know what sits alongside board certification without being part of it. A physician’s credentials usually include several items that are easy to lump together.

Jordan Smith, for instance, holds ACLS, BLS, and PALS certifications. These are life support certifications covering advanced cardiac life support, basic life support, and pediatric advanced life support. They matter, but they’re held separately and serve a different purpose from specialty board certification.

Professional memberships form another category. Jordan Smith is a member of the American Medical Association and the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Belonging to a society like the ASA is a professional affiliation, and the ABA plays no role in granting it.

Research is a third area people sometimes fold into the picture. Jordan Smith has been open that his focus has been clinical practice and building healthcare businesses rather than an academic, research-heavy career, and he considers his board certification a more meaningful measure of his work. More on his clinical background is available at Jordan Smith Anesthesiologist.

How to Check an Anesthesiologist’s Credentials

For patients and families, understanding what board certification requires pays off when it’s time to check a specific doctor. A few habits help.

First, look up the state license separately from the board certification, since each comes from a different source. Second, look at physician directory listings, which gather specialty, training, and practice details in one place. Jordan Smith’s U.S. News Health profile and his WebMD physician listing are examples of the kind of directory pages that exist for practicing physicians. Third, check a physician’s own site for a fuller account of their background, such as jordanbenjaminsmith.com.

No single source covers everything, and reading several together gives a far clearer picture than the words “board certified” do alone. Where two sources disagree, that’s worth a follow-up question to the practice’s office.

Why the Credential Means More Than a Title

With all the steps behind it, board certification can still look like one line on a CV. The physicians who earn it often see it very differently. Jordan Benjamin Smith was diagnosed with leukemia as a child, and that experience is the reason he became a doctor.

The milestone he’s most proud of, he has said, is coming full circle from his own cancer experience to become a board-certified anesthesiologist, more than any award or title.

The requirements behind ABA certification, then, stand for real years of work: a degree, a residency, a licensing process, and a specialty credential that has to stay current. Knowing those pieces gives the phrase “board certified” far more weight the next time you see it.

Jordan Benjamin Smith, MD, is a board-certified anesthesiologist and healthcare entrepreneur who practices as a locums anesthesiologist across Florida and New York. He is the owner of City Surgical of Manhattan, a surgery center in New York City, and the founder of The IV Pro, an intravenous therapy business serving South Florida. Born in Boca Raton, Florida, he earned his MD from the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University.