Family Medicine Exam Blueprint
Content Area Descriptions
- Acute Care and Diagnosis will include questions from scenarios encountered in normal ambulatory clinic practice where you will be asked to provide next steps in diagnosis, provide the correct diagnosis or provide the initial treatment.
- Chronic Care Management will include questions from scenarios encountered in normal ambulatory clinic practice or other long term care settings where you will be asked to provide ongoing management of a chronic disease
- Emergent and Urgent Care will include questions from hospital settings, emergency department settings, urgent care settings or ambulatory practice settings where you are asked patient management decisions of a patient which are needed in a matter of hours.
- Preventive Care will include questions from any issue encountered in the ambulatory clinic setting where preventive care services are being provided.
- Foundations of Care will include questions regarding other topics important in the provision of care, including statistics, health policy, legal issues, health equity and other topics.
Exam Blueprint FAQs
An exam blueprint is an outline of the content areas and the targeted percentage of questions in each area.
The ABFM exam blueprint is used to construct all ABFM exams, including the Family Medicine Certification Exam (one-day exam), Family Medicine Certification Longitudinal Assessment (longitudinal assessment), and the Family Medicine In-Training Exam (ITE) for residents. It also informs the development of self-assessment activities, such as the Continuous Knowledge Self-Assessment (CKSA) and Knowledge Self-Assessment (KSA) activities.
The new blueprint was revised to ensure that exam content better aligns with clinical activities of today’s practicing family physician. The exam blueprint has been realigned based on clinical activities rather than organ systems, and supports targeted learning through meaningful performance feedback.
The new blueprint will be incorporated in the one-day exam and longitudinal assessment beginning in 2025.
The new blueprint is organized into five domains of care that directly connect the exam content to the clinical activities that family physicians are routinely performing. This structure allows for more precise performance feedback that’s based on the representation of actual knowledge.
Selection of Clinical Activities
Clinical activities were derived from an exhaustive analysis of national datasets presenting hundreds and thousands of patient visits. Sources include the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) and PRIME Registry data, a publication on skills and knowledge needed at the completion of residency that listed 76 core competencies, a comprehensive item classification list used by ABFM examination content development staff, and an in-depth analysis from the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC-3) diagnosis.
Validation of Clinical Activities
The clinical activities were validated through a series of focus groups of practicing family physicians in the U.S., as well as review of a Blue Ribbon panel with representatives from all the clinical and academic organizations in Family Medicine. Finally, to arrive at a sound estimate of the frequency and risk of harm of each of the clinical activities, a randomized national survey was completed by a thousand practicing family physicians. The ABFM Board of Directors reviewed the process and results at each stage and approved the final blueprint design.
No, the question format will not change from the current single best answer multiple choice format. The exam will be scored in the same manner, and no change in the pass rate is anticipated.
The exam will continue to be a broad-based assessment of family medicine topics. The main difference you’ll notice is in the structure of post-exam feedback, which will be organized under the five content domains. Please know that your training and exam preparation will still be valid and effective as you get ready for the one-day exam.
