CAQ Cheat Sheet 2026: One-Page Review of Must-Know Facts

CAQ Overview: The Fast Facts

If you're a family physician heading into fellowship or already board-eligible, this page is the condensed version of everything you need before test day. The Certificate of Added Qualification in Adolescent Medicine (CAQ) is an American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) credential, but the exam itself is built jointly by ABFM, the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP), and the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). ABP administers the exam, and it's delivered at Prometric testing centers nationwide.

This cheat sheet assumes you already understand the basics of the pathway. If you need the full walkthrough of eligibility rules, timing, and content weighting, start with the CAQ Requirements 2026 guide and the complete guide to all 15 content areas. This page exists to compress it all onto one scannable reference you can review the night before your exam.

The 15 Content Domains at a Glance

ABFM's 2026 examination booklet lists 15 content topics that appear on the shared exam. This is described as a representative topic list rather than the full weighted ABP blueprint, so don't assume equal emphasis across all 15 - but you do need working clinical knowledge of every single one.

For a domain-by-domain breakdown with study priorities and cross-topic overlap, the full domains guide goes deeper than a summary table ever could.

Registration, Eligibility & Fees Cheat Sheet

Eligibility for initial CAQ certification through the family medicine pathway comes down to four checkpoints:

• ABFM certification in good standing - your base family medicine board certification must be current.
• Compliant medical licensure and professionalism - no unresolved licensure or professionalism issues.
• 24 months of ACGME-accredited Adolescent Medicine fellowship completed after family medicine residency.
• Program-director verification confirming your fellowship training meets requirements.

If any of these pieces are unclear for your situation, the dedicated CAQ eligibility and requirements breakdown walks through each condition in detail.

Exam Day Rules and Format

The CAQ exam is a four-hour, proctored, computer-based assessment delivered at Prometric centers. A few operational details candidates frequently get wrong:

• It is closed book - no reference materials, notes, or outside resources.
• Personal calculators are prohibited, along with any personal study materials brought into the testing room.
• The exam format and question style mirror standard subspecialty board exams: single-best-answer, vignette-driven items across the 15 domains listed above.
• Guessing is not penalized - there's no scoring deduction for wrong answers, so leaving a question blank is strictly worse than answering it.

Because you can't bring notes or a calculator, memorization of key clinical thresholds, screening cutoffs, and immunization schedules matters more than it would on an open-resource exam. If you're trying to gauge how demanding this actually is relative to other board exams you've taken, How Hard Is the CAQ Exam? covers that comparison directly.

Passing Standard and Scoring

The passing standard is set by ABP before the exam is administered and applies uniformly across all participating boards - it isn't a moving target based on that year's candidate performance, and it isn't something ABFM sets independently. Because guessing carries no penalty, the practical scoring implication is simple: answer every question, use elimination strategies on uncertain items, and never leave items blank going into the final minutes.

If you want the mechanics of exactly how the passing threshold works and what it means for your preparation, the CAQ Passing Score guide covers that in more depth than a cheat sheet allows. And if you're still deciding how much runway to give yourself, cross-reference against CAQ Pass Rate 2026 for what's publicly known about outcomes.

What Happens After You Pass

Passing gets you continuous CAQ certification with no printed end date - but "continuous" comes with strings attached. Certification remains valid only as long as you:

• Maintain your underlying family medicine certification with ABFM
• Pay the annual CAQ continuing-certification process fee ($100)
• Complete required longitudinal assessment activity on schedule

Newly certified physicians enter MOCA-Peds in their sixth year, and maintenance runs on five-year cycles from there. This is a meaningfully different maintenance structure than a standalone recertification exam, so don't assume your CAQ upkeep mirrors your family medicine MOC timeline - track them separately.

Final-Week Sprint Review Plan

If you've already done your deep-content study and just need a structured final push, allocate your last seven days by domain cluster rather than reviewing everything equally. Use short, timed recall blocks (25-30 minutes on, 5 off) rather than long unfocused reading sessions - it forces active retrieval instead of passive rereading, which matters more on a closed-book, no-calculator exam.

For a longer-horizon study plan that starts months out rather than one week out, see the CAQ Study Guide 2026. Timed, mixed-domain practice sets on our full practice test platform are the closest simulation you'll get to the real closed-book, no-calculator conditions before test day.

Printable Quick-Reference Table

Keep this table bookmarked alongside your notes for the full domain guide - between the two, you have the entire logistical and content skeleton of the exam in one place. When you're ready to convert this into active practice rather than passive review, start a practice session here.

Frequently Asked Questions