Content standards

Which sources go into a ScrubCert question, which ones never do, and what happens when the honest answer is that we do not have one.

The rule underneath all of it

A question ships only if its answer can be traced to a document that you can open and read for yourself. Not to a memory, not to a consensus, not to a plausible inference from something nearby. If there is no readable public source, the sentence does not get written.

Sources we use

These are the authorities a ScrubCert citation is allowed to start with. The list is enforced by the build: a question whose citation does not begin with one of them does not compile.

Safety and infection control: the CDC, OSHA and its Bloodborne Pathogens standard at 29 CFR 1910.1030, NIOSH.
Laboratory regulation: the CLIA regulations at 42 CFR 493, CMS, the FDA, the Joint Commission.
Privacy, law and ethics: HIPAA at 45 CFR, HHS and its Office for Civil Rights, the Office of Inspector General, ADA.gov, the EEOC, the Department of Labor, the DEA, the Child Welfare Information Gateway, Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute, govinfo and the eCFR.
Clinical and anatomical facts: the NIH, MedlinePlus, StatPearls, PubMed Central, the NHLBI, the National Cancer Institute, the WHO, AHRQ, DailyMed, ISMP, OpenStax and Open RN.
Administrative and insurance topics: CMS, Medicare.gov, HealthCare.gov, HealthIT.gov, the NAIC, TRICARE and the Defense Health Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the FTC, USPS, NIST and plainlanguage.gov.
The exams themselves: the published test plans, content outlines, candidate handbooks and pass-rate reports of the NHA, the ASCP Board of Certification, the AAMA, AMT and NCCT.

Note the shape of that list: it is almost entirely government agencies, regulations and public health bodies. That is deliberate. A citation is only useful if the reader can follow it without paying anybody.

Sources we do not use, and why

Textbooks. The standard phlebotomy and medical assisting titles, and the publishers behind them, are excluded by name in the build. Their text is copyrighted and a reader cannot check it without buying the book.
Commercial question banks and flashcard sites. Excluded for the same reason, plus a worse one: their content is unverified, frequently wrong, and often copied from each other. Building on it would propagate somebody else’s mistakes with our name on them.
Real exam questions, from any body. Never, in any form. The exams are confidential.
Paid standards, as a dependency. Some technical standards sit behind a paywall. We do not build a question on one when a public authority covers the same ground, which is nearly always: the CDC, OSHA, CLIA, the FDA and the WHO cover it.

When the only source is a paid one: a declared gap

Occasionally an exam outline points at a rule that exists only inside a proprietary document. The ASCP guideline, for example, says its regulatory questions may draw on standards that are not published free of charge.

In that situation there are four things one could do. Buy the document and copy from it: not allowed. Paraphrase what it probably says: that is guessing with extra steps. Quietly skip the topic and say nothing: dishonest. Or record a declared gap — note that the exam covers this, that no public source states it, and that it would need verification by a certified professional before anything is written. That is the one we do. A subject we have not covered is a fact about our content; a subject we have covered wrongly is a candidate walking into an exam with a false belief.

Language

Every question exists in English and in Spanish, and the English is the base. A translation that loses a number, a unit, a range, a negation or a condition does not ship: the check that compares the two is blocking, not advisory. A mistranslated clinical question is worse than no Spanish at all.

What we say about ourselves

ScrubCert is an independent study aid. It follows the published outlines; it does not copy the exams and it is not endorsed by anyone who writes them. Its practice tests follow the official outline — that is a claim about the outline, not about us. You will not find the app described here as official, because it is not.

Nor will you find a promised pass rate, a "probability of passing", or a guarantee with a refund attached. We do not have the data that would make such a number true, and we are not going to invent it.

Questions people ask

Which sources does ScrubCert use?

Public authorities that anyone can open: the CDC, OSHA and 29 CFR 1910.1030, the CLIA regulations at 42 CFR 493, HIPAA at 45 CFR, the FDA, CMS, Medicare.gov and HealthCare.gov, the NIH with MedlinePlus, StatPearls, PubMed Central and the NHLBI, the WHO, AHRQ, NIOSH, the DEA, the Department of Labor, the EEOC, ADA.gov, HealthIT.gov, DailyMed, the Joint Commission, OpenStax, and the certifying bodies’ own published outlines and handbooks.

Which sources does ScrubCert refuse to use?

Textbooks and commercial question banks, including the well-known phlebotomy and medical assisting titles and the study sites built on them. Their text is copyrighted, their content cannot be checked by a reader, and copying from them is exactly the thing an independent study aid must not do.

What is a declared gap?

When a standard the exam covers exists only inside a paid, proprietary document, we do not buy it, copy it or guess at it. We record a gap and note that it would need verification by a certified professional. A missing question is honest; an invented one is not.

Does ScrubCert reproduce real exam questions?

No, never, from any certifying body. The exams are confidential. ScrubCert works from the published outlines, which are public documents.

See how we write the questions, step by step, from the outline to publication.

This app is an independent study aid. It is not official and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Healthcareer Association (NHA), the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP), the American Association of Medical Assistants (AAMA), American Medical Technologists (AMT), the National Center for Competency Testing (NCCT), any school or training program, any test administration company, or any publisher. All names of examinations and organizations are used only to describe the exams this app prepares for. It does not reproduce any real exam question.