Development of a specialty-wide web-based medical knowledge assessment tool for resident education.

Medical knowledge is one of six core competencies identified by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The authors present a tool for assessment of medical knowledge developed by the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors. This tool is Internet based and consists of more than 50 online tests that emergency medicine residents are able to access. Test results are available to a resident's residency, along with the mean and standard deviation of all takers of that particular test. The result is a collaborative specialty-wide approach to the common problem of formatting tests to assess medical knowledge. The tool has been widely accepted by both residents and residencies.