Decks checked: October 2026
For an emergency medicine residency, the best Anki deck is Rob's Emergency Medicine Deck, now merged with EMpower on AnkiHub and built from EM:RAP, Tintinalli's and EM Basic. For a free option, EM Cases released its whole Quiz Vault as an Anki deck in 2023. For the EM shelf as a student, you don't need a specialty deck: the AnKing Step Deck's Step 2 and EM content covers it.
Emergency medicine covers everything, briefly, at speed. That makes it a good fit for Anki and a hard fit for any single deck. A fourth-year student on a four-week rotation, an intern facing the in-training exam and a third-year resident preparing for boards need very different amounts of material. Most "best EM deck" threads mix those audiences together, so this page separates them.
Rob's Emergency Medicine Deck by robhornberger is an AnkiHub deck aimed at medical students, residents and practicing emergency clinicians. Its wiki lists EM:RAP, Tintinalli's, EM Basic and other study aids as sources. It has since been combined with EMpower, a residency deck organized around Tintinalli's chapters (its wiki says it covered roughly 75% of the textbook) with plans for Rosh Review and Foundations tags. The combined deck had content updates posted as recently as July 2026. Access comes with any AnkiHub subscription tier. The wikis don't state a card count, so we don't give one.
Best for: EM residents preparing for the in-training exam and boards. Weakness: far more than a student on rotation needs.
EM Cases, the Canadian emergency medicine podcast and education site, released its entire Quiz Vault as a free Anki deck on 26 September 2023, downloadable from Google Drive. The Quiz Vault itself launched in 2019 with 800 questions tied to the podcast episodes and has grown since. Because the cards come from questions, they test application more than recall, which makes the deck a good partner to listening to the episodes rather than a replacement for a comprehensive deck. EM Cases suggests adding no more than 50 to 100 new cards a day, which is high for most people working shifts.
The AnKing Step Deck has over 30,000 cards for USMLE Step 1, 2 and 3 and is tagged by resource and topic. For an EM clerkship and its shelf exam, unsuspend the emergency medicine and relevant Step 2 cards (toxicology, trauma, cardiology, resuscitation) rather than starting a residency deck. Everything you learn there carries straight into Step 2 CK. See our Anki deck for Step 2 guide for the clerkship workflow.
In 2013, Brent Thoma described the AnkiEM project on what is now CanadiEM: chapter-by-chapter Anki summaries of Rosen's Emergency Medicine, inspired by Reuben Strayer's EMCards and released free in the spirit of FOAM. It is one of the earliest EM Anki projects and a useful reminder that summarizing a textbook into cards works. It is not maintained, and the Rosen's edition it follows is long out of date.
| Deck | Best for | Sources | Maintained | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rob's EM Deck + EMpower | Residents, ITE, boards | EM:RAP, Tintinalli's, EM Basic | Yes (updates July 2026) | AnkiHub subscription |
| EM Cases Quiz Vault | Question practice with the podcast | EM Cases episodes | Released Sept 2023 | Free |
| AnKing Step Deck | Students, EM shelf, Step 2 CK | First Aid, UWorld, Boards and Beyond tags | Yes, weekly | AnkiHub subscription |
| AnkiEM project | Historical interest | Rosen's chapter summaries | No (2013) | Free |
For the shelf and for board-style knowledge, pre-made decks are the right choice. Emergency medicine content is standardized enough that a maintained deck beats anything you would write on post-shift evenings.
Where your own cards win is local practice and teaching. Your department's protocols, your program's weekly conference slides and the cases you saw on shift are not in any shared deck, and they are what your attendings will quiz you on. Turn conference slides into cards the week you see them, and add a card for every question bank miss and every clinical pearl you didn't know.
Keep new cards low (10 to 20 a day) so reviews stay doable after a long shift, and accept that you will miss some days during a run of nights. FSRS handles late reviews better than the old scheduler, so turn it on. On days off, clear your reviews first and only add new cards if you have time left. The Anki settings guide explains each option, and Anki settings for Step 2 suits students on rotation.
Related guides: Anki decks for Step 2, Step 3 and psychiatry. Or see Anki decks for med school for every subject we cover.
For shelf and board knowledge, use the decks above. StudyCards AI covers what they can't: your program's conference slides, departmental protocols and rotation handouts. Upload them as a PDF and get question and cloze cards you can download as an Anki .apkg file, so the teaching from this week's conference is in your reviews by the weekend. Check doses and thresholds on every generated card against the source before you study it.
Try StudyCards AI FreeRob's Emergency Medicine Deck, now combined with the EMpower deck on AnkiHub, is the most complete maintained option. It draws on EM:RAP, Tintinalli's and EM Basic, and EMpower was organized around Tintinalli's chapters. It needs an AnkiHub subscription.
For the EM shelf, use the AnKing Step Deck with the emergency medicine and Step 2 tags, since the shelf tests the same clinical knowledge as Step 2 CK. A residency deck like Rob's goes much deeper than a four-week rotation needs.
Yes. EM Cases released its entire Quiz Vault as a free Anki deck in September 2023, downloadable from a Google Drive link on the EM Cases website. It is question-based and pairs well with the EM Cases podcast episodes.
Yes. Spaced repetition suits the ITE because it tests a broad base of facts that residents see unevenly on shift. A common approach is to combine a residency deck with a question bank and add a card for every question you miss.
Set new cards low, around 10 to 20 a day, so your reviews stay manageable after long or overnight shifts. A smaller daily load you finish every day beats a large one you abandon after a string of nights.
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