comparison of emergency medical residency pre-board and board exams among universities of medical sciences in iran

Background: designing and conducting residency exams have been the province of type i universities since 2005, based on the plans of the medical education council. this study compared emergency medical residency pre-board and board exam results among the universities of medical sciences in iran. methods: this cross-sectional descriptive study consisted of 600 questions from residency pre-board exams and 150 questions from board exams in 2013-2014, as well as 600 questions from residency promotion exams and 150 questions from the board exam in 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 at the tabriz, shahid beheshti, mashhad, and tehran universities of medical sciences. all questions were at the level i through iii by bloom’s taxonomy. structural principles were evaluated using millman’s checklist. all data were analyzed using spss 18 with chi-square tests. results: the mean percent of more contextualized questions of the questions at bloom’s taxonomy levels ii and iii in residency pre-board exam questions was 76.6% in 2013-2014 and 86.6% in 2014-2015 among the four universities. in terms of structural principles, the percentage of board exam questions that aligned with millman’s structural principles was 100.0% and 99.3% in 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, respectively. for the residency pre-board exam in 2014-2015, the mean discrimination index was 0.14 (low), and the mean of the difficulty factor was 0.64 (appropriate). conclusion: questions at bloom’s taxonomy levels ii and iii were higher in 2014-2015 in comparison to those in 2013-2014, and the percentage of the correctly-structured questions was high and did not significantly change from 2013-2014 in comparison to that of 2014-2015.