Exam guide
The Arab Board Internal Medicine Part 1, explained
The preliminary written examination of the Arab Board of Health Specializations in Internal Medicine is a progression gate, not a licence. It sits inside the residency programme: passing it is what lets a trainee continue into the third year, and a pass stays valid for six years while you work towards the final examination. If you are looking for the exam that admits you to practise in a particular country, that is a separate licensing exam set by that country's own authority.
Last checked 22 August 2026. Figures on this page are read off the Internal Medicine Scientific Council's own guidebook, the board's examination regulations page, and the Jordan Medical Council's announcement of the exam — not from preparation sites. Where a figure comes from a document the board has not refreshed, this page says so rather than presenting it as current.
How the Arab Board differs from a licensing exam
The Arab Board is a pan-Arab specialty board rather than a national regulator, and its examinations run inside accredited training programmes across its member states. That has two practical consequences. You sit the same paper whether you are training in Baghdad, Amman, Sana'a or the Gulf. And eligibility is about training served, not about where you intend to work: one academic year, ten months, of accredited training completed before you may sit the preliminary written exam.
Volume is rising. Counting the highest serial in each of the board's own published lists of successful candidates gives 120 passes in May 2024, 198 in December 2024, 153 in May 2025, 358 in December 2025 and 181 in May 2026 — roughly three to five hundred passes a year, trending upward.
How the exam is structured
| Questions | 100 multiple choice questions, single best answer |
|---|---|
| Options | Five (A to E) — not four |
| Time | 3 hours, one paper |
| Language | English |
| Delivery | ExamSoft, board wide since 2020 — not Prometric |
| Pass mark | 60% |
| Sittings | Twice a year, May and December |
| Attempts | Three, plus one discretionary exceptional attempt |
| Eligibility | One academic year (10 months) of accredited training completed |
| Validity | A pass is valid 6 years |
The five option format is the detail most worth noticing if you are revising with material built for the Gulf licensing exams, which are four option papers. A fifth option changes how a question behaves: there is one more plausible contender to eliminate, and practice that trains you on four will not rehearse that.
What the exam covers
Unusually for this region, the council publishes approximate domain proportions — on page 16 of its own guidebook, introduced as the proportions observed in the questions set for the examinations. They sum to exactly 100%.
| Domain | Share of the paper |
|---|---|
| Infectious diseases | 20% |
| Cardiovascular | 10% |
| Respiratory | 10% |
| Renal and electrolytes | 10% |
| Gastroenterology | 10% |
| Endocrinology and metabolism | 10% |
| Haematology | 10% |
| Neurology | 5% |
| Rheumatology | 5% |
| Immunology and allergy | 5% |
| Miscellaneous | 5% |
Infectious diseases at 20% is the single most important fact on this page for planning revision: it is double every other major system, and it is the one domain where a candidate's own regional experience is most likely to differ from what the paper asks. Note also that there is no oncology line and no psychiatry line — oncology sits within haematology, psychiatry within miscellaneous.
One caveat, stated plainly because it would be easy to leave out. That guidebook was issued in 1982 and its own header records no update since. Two of its other statements are demonstrably stale — it describes a single sitting each December, taken with 2B pencils, while the board now runs two sittings a year and has delivered by ExamSoft since 2020. Nothing published since contradicts the weights, and they remain the only official statement of what the paper contains, so this page treats them as authoritative but unrefreshed rather than quietly presenting a 44-year-old document as current.
How to prepare
The published weights make the arithmetic unusually concrete. Twenty of the hundred questions will be infectious diseases; five will be neurology. Time spent in proportion to those numbers is time spent well, and the corollary is that an even sweep across systems under-prepares you for a fifth of the paper.
Beyond that, two things are specific to this exam. Practise at five options, because eliminating four distractors is a different skill from eliminating three. And practise management and interpretation questions rather than bare recall: the paper reads as clinical vignettes asking what to do next, at the level of a resident who has completed a year of training, not as a basic science test.
Questions about the Arab Board Part 1
Is the Arab Board Part 1 a licensing exam?
No. It is a preliminary written examination inside an Arab Board residency programme — a progression gate, not a licence to practise. Passing it is what allows a resident to continue to the third training year; licensing is a separate matter handled by the health authority of the country you work in.
How many questions are on the Arab Board Internal Medicine Part 1, and how long is it?
One paper of 100 multiple choice questions in 3 hours, in English. The count and duration come from the Jordan Medical Council's own announcement of the exam, and are independently consistent with the circulated June 2019 answer key, which runs from 1 to 100.
Does the Arab Board use four options or five?
Five, A to E. This matters if you are practising on a question bank built for the Gulf licensing exams, which are four option papers. The June 2019 answer key distributes across all five letters — A 17, B 26, C 27, D 17, E 12 — so E is a working answer, not a decoy letter.
Is there a published blueprint, and can I trust it?
Yes, and with one caveat. The Internal Medicine Scientific Council prints approximate domain proportions on page 16 of its own Guidebook of Internal Medicine, and they sum to 100%. Infectious diseases is the largest single domain at 20%, double every other major system. The caveat: that guidebook was issued in 1982 and has never been updated, and two of its other statements are now wrong — it describes a single December sitting taken with 2B pencils, while the board runs two sittings a year and has used ExamSoft since 2020. Nothing more recent contradicts the weights, so treat them as official but unrefreshed.
Why is there no oncology or psychiatry domain?
The blueprint lists eleven domains and neither appears, even though the curriculum section of the same guidebook names haematology-oncology and psychiatric illness as training domains. Oncology therefore sits inside haematology and psychiatry inside miscellaneous. There is no twelfth domain to prepare for.
What is the pass mark, and how many attempts do I get?
60%, stated both in the guidebook and on the board's examination laws and regulations page. Three attempts, plus one discretionary exceptional attempt granted by the Scientific Council — that is the preliminary exam's allowance specifically. The four attempt figure quoted in some places belongs to the final written exam, not this one.
How long does a pass last?
Six years. If you have not passed the final examination within that window, the preliminary must be re-sat. There is no promotion to the third training year without it.
What does the preliminary written exam cost?
$200 for the preliminary written exam itself, on the guidebook's fee schedule, alongside a $100 one-off registration and $225 per training year. Those figures carry the same 1982-vintage caveat as the rest of that document, so confirm the current fee with your Scientific Council before you budget on it.
Where PassCurve fits
PassCurve is building a question bank for this exam now, written to the published domain weights above and at the paper's own five option format. It is in preparation and not yet available to practise — this guide is published ahead of it because the blueprint is worth having whether or not you revise with us.
PassCurve is an independent revision tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited by the Arab Board of Health Specializations, and it makes no pass rate guarantee.
Create a free account to practise the exams that are live today.