Build 10-Question Mini-Quizzes with OpenEvidence

Maya Brooks

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the AI Med Tutor Podcast. I’m your co-host, Maya Brooks—your AI-generated fourth-year medical student—here to help make sense of medical training and connect it to real performance on exams and in the clinic.

Dr. Randy Clinch

And I’m Dr. Randy Clinch, a DO family medicine physician and medical educator. Today we’re solving a very specific, very common problem in board prep: you finally identify a weak pattern you want to drill—maybe you want ten questions on one topic, or you want to alternate two look-alike clinical patterns—but your question bank only has a few items that really match what you need. So today we’re going to talk about a “mini-quiz builder” approach using OpenEvidence and item-writing rules to generate practice questions with explanations for yourself, so you can create targeted drills when your qbank coverage is thin. Quick reminder: this episode is for education, not medical advice, and nothing we discuss is sponsored by any resource or vendor.

Maya Brooks

This is really appealing because it keeps your studying efficient. You’re not hunting for questions that don’t exist—you’re building the reps you need.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Right. Two important guardrails up front. First, AI-generated questions can be wrong, incomplete, or misleading, so you’re using this as a practice scaffold—not as your source of truth. Second, do not put patient-identifiable information into any AI tool. Keep prompts de-identified and educational.

Maya Brooks

Before we get into the workflow, what should students know about OpenEvidence?

Dr. Randy Clinch

OpenEvidence describes itself as free and unlimited for healthcare professionals, and it provides a web experience plus an app. If you’re using the mobile app, Apple’s App Store listing also notes categories of data the developer may collect and link to you, so it’s another reason to keep prompts strictly educational and never include actual patient information.

Maya Brooks

So this is a tool we can use responsibly for learning, but we still apply good judgment.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Exactly—responsible inputs, and then verify outputs.

Maya Brooks

Let’s give students the simple plan. How do they go from “I need more practice on this” to “I have a 10-question quiz with explanations”?

Dr. Randy Clinch

Here’s the workflow that consists of 5 guideposts. First guidepost: “Sign up and set up.” Second guidepost: “Choose your quiz target.” Third guidepost: “Use item-writing rules to generate better questions.” Fourth guidepost: “Verify and refine.” Fifth guidepost: “Turn it into a retest set.”

Maya Brooks

Start with the first guidepost: sign up and set up. What do students actually do?

Dr. Randy Clinch

They go to OpenEvidence.com and create an account using the site’s sign-up flow. Depending on how the platform verifies users, some sources describe identity verification steps for clinicians or trainees, so students should follow the prompts on the site and use whatever verification method is requested. The key point is: once you’re in, you can use it as your quiz generator.

Maya Brooks

Now guidepost two: choose your quiz target. What should a good target look like?

Dr. Randy Clinch

A good target is narrow and testable. Examples are “anion gap metabolic acidosis differentials,” “nephritic versus nephrotic,” “heart failure versus COPD exacerbation,” “murmur maneuvers,” “thyroid function patterns,” or “stroke localization basics.” Your Miss Log is perfect for this—pull a pattern you keep missing or pull a look-alike pair you keep confusing.

Maya Brooks

Guidepost three is the heart of this episode: using item-writing rules so the questions are actually useful. What rules should students follow?

Dr. Randy Clinch

Use one-best-answer rules. The NBME’s item-writing guide spells out principles that translate well to Step/Level-style multiple choice: focus on an important testing point, assess application rather than isolated recall, write a clear lead-in that a test-taker can answer from the vignette and lead-in alone, and make distractors plausible and homogeneous. That same guide even describes a “cover-the-options” concept—meaning the stem and lead-in should be clear enough that you can predict the answer before seeing options.

Maya Brooks

So we’re prompting the tool to create questions that behave like real board-style items, not trivia.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Right. And for COMLEX relevance, NBOME emphasizes that COMLEX items are single-best-answer and integrate osteopathic principles and whole-patient context. So, if you want a COMLEX-flavored set, you can ask for osteopathic distinctiveness to be integrated where appropriate—without turning it into a pure OMM quiz unless that’s your goal.

Maya Brooks

Can we give students an idea of a prompt they can type into OpenEvidence to generate a 10-question set?

Dr. Randy Clinch

Yes. Here’s a spoken version students can envision clearly using hemolytic anemia as the topic. “Create ten one-best-answer, board-style multiple choice questions on hemolytic anemia. Each question should have a short clinical vignette, a clear lead-in, and five plausible answer options with one best answer. After each question, provide the correct answer and a brief explanation of why it’s correct and why each distractor is less appropriate. Keep the questions at the level of Step 2 or COMLEX Level 2. Use realistic qualifiers like clinical stability, timing, and urgency so the question tests decision-making, not trivia. Do not use trick wording, and keep the stem focused.”

Maya Brooks

That’s clear. It tells the tool exactly what kind of items you want.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Right. And if you want a “compare two patterns” drill—this is a great efficiency move—you can add: “Make the set interleaved: alternate questions that test Pattern A and Pattern B so I practice discrimination. Do not identify the condition your testing at the beginning of the question.” Replace “Pattern A and Pattern B” with whichever two conditions you’d like to test your discrimination upon, such as G6PD Deficiency and Hereditary Spherocytosis. Interleaving is powerful because it forces your brain to decide between look-alikes instead of memorizing in a single block.

Maya Brooks

Now guidepost four: verify and refine. What does that look like, practically?

Dr. Randy Clinch

Two quick steps. First, skim for obvious flaws: ambiguous stems, two correct answers, or distractors that are silly. NBME warns about technical item flaws and the need to review items for issues that add irrelevant difficulty. Second, pick one or two questionable explanations and verify them using a trusted primary source—your core reference, a guideline, or the citations provided by the tool if it includes them. This is where you keep yourself safe: AI can draft questions, but you are the quality control.

Maya Brooks

Guidepost five: turn it into a retest set. How should students actually use the quiz once they generate it?

Dr. Randy Clinch

Treat it like a mini block. Do it timed or untimed depending on your goal. Then run your normal post-question triage: content vs reasoning vs mechanics. If the set reveals a hinge-clue issue, make one Pattern Card. If it reveals a mechanism gap, do a short precision content review. Then retest with either your qbank or another mini-quiz set. The point is to turn “I need more questions” into “I got the reps, found the leak, fixed the leak, and proved it.”

Maya Brooks

Let’s give two concrete use cases so students can picture when they’d use this.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Use case one: “My qbank only has three good questions on this topic.” Example: “renal tubular acidosis patterns.” Generate ten questions, do them, then identify which RTA type you’re mixing up and build one Pattern Card. Use case two: “I keep confusing two patterns.” Example: “nephritic versus nephrotic,” or “heart failure versus COPD exacerbation.” Ask for an interleaved set that alternates those patterns. Then, in review, force yourself to name the hinge clue that separates them—because that’s the skill boards reward.

Maya Brooks

What should students avoid doing with this approach?

Dr. Randy Clinch

Two things. First, don’t replace your question bank with AI questions. Use this when you need targeted reps that your qbank doesn’t provide. Second, don’t assume every generated item is correct. Use item-writing rules to improve quality, then verify questionable points, and focus on the learning process: pattern recognition, hinge clues, mechanisms, and next steps.

Maya Brooks

Recap time. What do you want students to remember?

Dr. Randy Clinch

If your question bank can’t give you enough reps on a weak pattern, you can generate a targeted 10-question mini-quiz using OpenEvidence and one-best-answer item-writing rules. Use NBME-style principles to make questions focused, clear, and clinically applied, and use COMLEX principles to integrate osteopathic context where appropriate. Then verify and refine, and run the set like a real block: diagnose the miss type, apply a small fix, and retest. This turns a “coverage gap” into a training opportunity.

Maya Brooks

That’s it for today’s episode of the AI Med Tutor Podcast. If you know someone who keeps saying, “My qbank doesn’t have enough questions on this,” share this episode with them.

Dr. Randy Clinch

And remember: your goal isn’t to collect more questions. Your goal is to create the right reps for the pattern you need to master.

Maya Brooks

We’ll see you next week everyone! And in the meantime—stay curious and keep learning!