4.3. Program Design

Each yearly edition of the Quarterly Questions program assesses everyday clinical knowledge essential to the practice of ophthalmology and promotes the application of new knowledge from recent peer-reviewed journal articles. You should think of Quarterly Questions as one activity with two components:

Knowledge Assessment
New knowledge questions are released during the first two quarters of every year. You will have the option to choose questions in comprehensive ophthalmology or your preferred subspecialty area(s). Because questions are designed to address everyday knowledge, they should not require advance study. In every year that you participate, you will see 40 knowledge questions: 30 questions from within your subspecialty and 10 in core ophthalmic knowledge. To earn a “pass” for a given year of questions, your score on the knowledge section must meet or exceed the annual passing standard AND you must complete the article section in its entirety. To complete the entire Quarterly Questions program for your Continuing Certification cycle, you must accumulate five “passes” before the expiration of your certificate.

Article-Based Learning
For this section of the activity, teams of board-certified ophthalmologists representing the major ophthalmic subspecialty societies have carefully curated the recent literature and selected journal articles that they consider “must-read” publications. Inclusion of an article does not imply ABO endorsement of its conclusions; some themes may be controversial but have been deemed important for practicing clinicians to know. During Quarter 3, you will be asked to choose five of these articles to read at your own pace and answer 10 questions about them. The articles are available to you at no cost, but you must access them using the special links inside the Quarterly Questions platform. Article options from 2019 forward can also help you meet Continuing Certification requirements for Patient Safety and Improvement in Medical Practice. It’s important to note that the primary intent of the article-based section is learning. Your score on the article-based questions is not factored into the score you achieve on the knowledge-based section; however, full completion of the article-based section is still required. In return for your participation in this section, you will have the opportunity to claim CME and self-assessment credit. (See Earning CME/Self-Assessment Credit below.)

What about Quarter 4?
Knowledge-based questions are released in Quarters 1 and 2, while article-based questions are released in Quarter 3. The last quarter of every year is now a “bonus” quarter, where participants who have already earned a passing score can explore additional knowledge-based content.

Each year of the questions has a five-year shelf life before it will be retired and removed from the platform. For instance, the 2024 questions will be removed after 12/31/2028.