GI Exam Dates 2026: Testing Windows, Deadlines & Scheduling

Why There Is No Fixed Exam Calendar

Candidates searching for "GI exam dates 2026" often expect a published calendar of test sittings, registration deadlines and late-fee cutoffs. For POCUS Gastrointestinal certification, that mental model does not fit. The credential is administered by the Point-of-Care Ultrasound Certification Academy, part of Inteleos, and the assessment is delivered online through myPOCUS and its learning management system. Rather than booking a seat on a specific date at a physical site, you purchase the certification and work through it on your own schedule, subject to a completion window.

This changes what "scheduling" means. Your real planning questions are not "which Saturday in March?" but rather "when will my peer evaluators be available?", "when can I protect uninterrupted time for five simulated cases?", and "how do I make sure all of this finishes inside the window that starts when I pay?" This article walks through each of those timing mechanics so you can plan deliberately instead of hunting for a calendar that does not exist.

If you are still deciding whether to pursue the credential at all, our overviews of what GI certification is and the GI certification pathway give useful context before you commit to a timeline.

What You Need Before You Can Start

Because the clock starts at purchase, the single most important scheduling decision happens before you pay: confirm you actually meet the prerequisites so you do not burn days of your window resolving eligibility gaps. The full breakdown lives in our GI requirements guide, but the timing-relevant pieces are these:

• Professional standing: You must be a healthcare professional in good standing and actively practicing in the relevant clinical area.
• Case experience: You attest to performing and participating in the interpretation of at least 25 gastrointestinal POCUS cases within the preceding 2 years.
• POCUS Fundamentals: Required unless waived, either by an SPI examination passed within 5 years or by a current qualifying ARDMS/APCA credential.
• Peer evaluators: You must provide at least 2 healthcare-provider peer evaluators with an ultrasound clinical background who know your relevant scanning abilities.

Each of these has its own lead time. The 25-case attestation is a look-back, so it is effectively already determined. Fundamentals may need to be completed first if you do not hold a waiver. And your peer evaluators are people with their own calendars, which is where many candidates lose time.

The 90-Day Completion Window

The central timing rule is this: you must complete both components within 90 days of purchase. It is worth being precise about what that number is and is not.

• It is an access and completion window that begins when you buy the certification.
• It is not a timed examination sitting. There is no single countdown during which you must finish all questions in one continuous block.
• It is not a practical-assessment duration or a course-hour requirement.

The issuer's FAQ permits stopping and resuming online assessments, so you are not forced to complete the Clinical Case Assessment in one go. That flexibility is genuinely useful: you can work through cases across several sessions around clinical shifts. However, a confidentiality and nondisclosure agreement applies, so what you see inside the assessment stays inside it.

Practically, 90 days is generous for the assessment itself but tight if peer evaluation stalls. Treat the first few weeks as the period to get your evaluators engaged, not as warm-up time. For a sense of how much preparation to bank beforehand, see our GI study guide.

Scheduling Around the Two Components

The certification has two parts, and both must be passed. Understanding how they differ helps you decide what to do first.

The scheduling implication is straightforward: the Peer Evaluation is the component you control least, so it should start earliest. The Clinical Case Assessment is entirely in your hands and can be fit into whatever time remains. If you want to understand how scoring works across both parts, read our explainers on the GI passing score and the GI pass rate; note that no credential-specific pass rate has been verified publicly, so be cautious of any site that quotes one with confidence.

Timing Your Peer Evaluators

Because only the first 2 completed peer questionnaires determine the peer result, speed of completion matters as much as who you choose. A third evaluator who responds late does not rescue you if your first two come back first and are weaker; likewise, a slow first pick can delay the whole component.

Choose evaluators who:

• Have an ultrasound clinical background, as the issuer requires
• Have actually watched you scan, so they can speak to the criteria with credibility
• Are reliably responsive and unlikely to be on leave during your 90 days

Brief them ahead of time on what the evaluation covers. The seven criteria are practical and observable: whether your images have good diagnostic quality, whether you set gain and depth sensibly, whether you obtain the right views, whether you use compression appropriately, whether you recognize pathology, and whether you apply color Doppler when it adds value. An evaluator who understands these categories can respond faster and more accurately.

Retake Timelines and Waiting Periods

Not everyone passes on the first attempt, and the retake rules add several dates you should know in advance. Per the Academy's published policies:

• 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 in the sources reviewed, so confirm it directly with the issuer.
• You must apply for a retake within 90 days of failure.
• Any initially passed component is retained for the first retake application.

That last point deserves emphasis. If you pass the Peer Evaluation but fall short on the Clinical Case Assessment, you do not redo the peer component on your first retake. Knowing this changes how you think about the first attempt: the peer work is "banked" once passed, so you can concentrate your remaining energy on the case-based component. The 30-day wait also gives you a built-in window to remediate, which is best spent revisiting the domains that drove the miss.

For the money side of a first attempt versus a retake, see the GI certification cost breakdown. And if you are weighing how demanding the assessment is before committing to a timeline, our piece on how hard the GI exam is can help set expectations.

The Fundamentals Clock

There is a second, easily misunderstood timeline attached to POCUS Fundamentals, and it is worth getting right because candidates frequently garble it.

The issuer's FAQ, handbook and renewal guidance state that Fundamentals does not expire. However, the policies separately require that you earn your first content-specific certificate within 3 years of Fundamentals, or reapply for Fundamentals. This is a progression restriction, not a 3-year expiry of the Fundamentals credential itself. It stops applying once a content-specific certificate has been earned and appropriately maintained.

If you need Fundamentals, it is a separate purchase at USD 125, and the combined initial issuer fees come to USD 275 only when you must buy both it and the GI certification (the standalone clinical certification fee is USD 150, with reductions available for eligible countries). Optional courses are excluded from those figures.

Planning Your Window Around the Five Domains

Since you cannot pick an exam date, the next best scheduling tool is deciding what to study when. The Clinical Case Assessment is built on five weighted objectives, and the weights tell you where calendar time pays off most. For a deeper treatment of each, see the GI exam domains guide.

Sonographic Findings and Diagnostic Findings are jointly the largest, at 33% each, which totals 66% of the Clinical Case Assessment. That is two-thirds of the case-based component sitting in two closely related skills: recognizing what the image shows, and deciding what it means clinically. Treat them as a pair rather than separate topics.

This is a planning template, not an issuer requirement, and it is the only generic-style section in this article. The GI-specific point is the ordering: anatomy first, then findings and diagnosis together, with pathology reinforced throughout. Published pathology examples include abscess, appendicitis, ascites, hernia, intra-abdominal bleeding, no sonographic abnormalities, pneumoperitoneum and small bowel obstruction. That list is non-exhaustive, and the outline explicitly includes recognizing when POCUS cannot establish an initial diagnosis, so build time into your schedule to practice knowing when the answer is "this scan does not settle it."

For a compact reference to review during the final weeks, our GI cheat sheet condenses the must-know facts, and you can pressure-test your readiness with the practice tests on the main site.

Renewal and Five-Year Planning

Once you pass, the next date that matters is far away but easy to forget. The certification is valid for 5 years. Clinical renewal at the five-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 policies and maintenance pages differ on specialty point totals, so no such total is applied here. If you want to be certain what renewal asks of you, check the issuer's maintenance of certification page directly when you are within a year or so of expiry, and set a calendar reminder well ahead.

Thinking about the credential's long-run value? Our analyses of whether the certification is worth it, GI salary considerations and GI jobs frame the decision in role-based terms. Be wary of any claim that this specific credential produces a guaranteed pay increase; no such credential-specific figure is supported by the sources reviewed.

Key Deadlines at a Glance

None of these require waiting for a published exam date. Every deadline is relative to something you do: your purchase, your failed attempt, your Fundamentals pass, or your certification date. That is the real calendar for this credential.

Frequently Asked Questions