Have had a significant hiatus from this blog since finishing medical school in England and starting out as a doctor in Singapore 2 years ago. Don't regret leaving the NHS and coming home, seeing the shambolic state it currently is in. (The far higher pay in Singapore helps too. Hehe.)
My investment hobby is still well and alive but I am currently in the stage of capital accumulation through my day job i.e. as a doctor.
Just a quick post now that I've passed MRCP part I. (Barely!!) I was constantly Googling regarding question banks and which was the recommended one to do, hence this post which will hopefully help someone buy the right question bank.
Signed up for the 2018/1 diet in Singapore.
Unfortunately at that time I was doing Emergency Medicine which was incredibly tiring, but filled with good learning as a junior doctor. (I'd strongly recommend it!)
Hence, I didn't have much time (or the discipline) to sit down and study.
In my final two years of medical school I relied alot upon question banks (which for medical students are far cheaper - to the tune of £50 each, which is not unreasonable.)
However, as a post-graduate the costs are far higher. Just the exam itself cost £594 to sit outside of UK (S$1050) - which busted my annual training fund of S$1000 just like that. Hence had to pay out-of-pocket for question banks and had to be careful with the quality of them.
I bought Kalra's essentials for MRCP (for RM90 (S$30, £17) at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and tried to read cover to cover. I lasted two chapters before giving up. Passive reading has never been my style of learning, and I've always learnt from getting stuff wrong, being put on the spot, getting questions wrong and analysing why I've got it wrong etc. I eventually sold that book at a profit back in Singapore. Hahaha.
Fortunately, my hospital at that time offered, to 100 junior doctors on a first come first serve basis, FREE 4 month question banks to BMJ OnExamination. Obviously I snapped it up.
I also did Pass medicine and mrcpass.com
I set myself a target for days I was not on nights or evening shifts (A&E being what it is) to do 100 questions a day. On my days off, before meeting friends or whatever, I'd have a couple or four hours in Starbucks to do questions on my tablet (I'd recommend a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones and a Spotify premium subscription - the Sony MDR-1000x is a fantastic example)
I will review these three as below based on the order I did them:
BMJ OnExamination
£100 or thereabouts for 4 months, often have flash sales for 10-20% off
-by far the best website out of the three
-questions are well thought out and very well explained.
-Has about 3000 questions or so, and I found them robust and similar to the actual format on the real exam
-If you have any queries or doubts about the answers, there is a part to ask the qbank and more often than not someone will reply
-they have two different types of working styles i.e work smart (choose your own specialties etc) or work hard (go through all specialties)
-their questions are also the hardest, the average score of people who used their Qbank is about 53% (I scored 57% at the end of 3000 questions, if you were wondering)
PassMedicine
£40 for 3 months
I disliked PassMedicine.
Has 2900 questions however, alot of the questions were very poorly worded, either easily leading you to one answer (ie easy) or had more than one correct answer.
The website itself is very user-friendly and fast to load. Basic looking but what does one expect for £40? I don't need good UI but I need good, robust questions for which I felt PM was lacking.
They also tended to ask you alot of guideline questions - which rarely came out in the actual exam. And as the BTS guidelines for asthma had just changed, this was really confusing.
They also have a knowledge tutor which is incredibly frustrating to use. These are quickfire questions where they ask you a specific high-yield fact - for example, how does cloxacillin exert its anti-microbial effect (inhibiting cell-wall formation). If you get that wrong, they will keep asking you on other antibiotic related questions e.g. how do cephalosporins work. This can be very very frustrating as there are a million high yielding facts but their system keeps you on HIV medicine or Paediatrics (yes there are paediatric questions) or Obstetric emergencies. Good concept but poorly executed.
I almost gave up halfway and bought PasTest but didn't because it was £99 and I just booked my vacation and hence was broke.
Average score for PM users about 55%, I scored 60%. (After completing BMJ OE, not a fantastic improvement)
MRCPASS.COM
£50 for 4 months
The worst website out of the three.
I bought this as I still had 3 weeks left to the MRCP having completed BMJ OE and PM as above, and was too cheap to buy PasTest. (Which still charged £99 for access until 9/1/18 - you should really reduce the price for short duration users!!)
Go and have a look for yourselves, straight out of the 90's.
However, the questions are very robust. The website is a one-man show, a consultant physician in London and hence explaining the poor UI.
The questions are a mix of his own and from previous years. There are 3000+ questions but I did not finish them.
I felt that the questions were better thought out than the PM ones but the explanations are shorter.
I scored about 65% after doing 900 questions, with average score of 56% from the users.
If I were to redo part I, I would probably start with MRCPASS, complete their questions and then end off with BMJ OE. I'd skip PM totally unless you have the time to finish all three and are too cheap to get PasTest, which I've heard is comparable to BMJ OE.
Will post an update on MRCP 2 after I complete it!
