MRCP Part 1 preparation: the complete revision guide

• Clinical medicine across all major specialties, tested through best-of-five single-best-answer questions.
• Applied basic medical sciences relevant to everyday clinical practice.
• Clinical reasoning, mechanisms of disease and interpretation of investigations.

• Two written papers, each 3 hours long, each with 100 best-of-five questions.
• Delivered as a computer-based exam at Pearson VUE test centres.
• A pass requires a scaled score above the pass mark set for that diet.

MRCP(UK) Part 1 is the first examination in the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians diploma, run by the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK. It is a written knowledge test taken by doctors moving from foundation-level practice into internal medicine training, and it is a prerequisite for the later Part 2 written and PACES clinical examinations.

It tests applied knowledge across the whole of general internal medicine rather than one specialty. The questions are clinical: a short case vignette, some investigations, and five plausible options of which one is best. Recall alone is rarely enough — most items require you to interpret data and choose between close differentials.

Part 1 is open to doctors with a minimum of 12 months' postgraduate experience in medical employment. You do not need to be in a UK training post, and there is no requirement to have completed a specific programme.

Eligibility criteria, attempt limits and the time window in which the full diploma must be completed are set by the Federation and are revised periodically. Confirm the current rules — along with application windows and fees — on the Examrix MRCP Part 1 exam dates page before you apply.

The Part 1 blueprint spreads 200 questions across the medical specialties, with the larger acute specialties carrying more items than the smaller ones. Cardiology, respiratory medicine, gastroenterology, endocrinology, neurology and clinical pharmacology together account for a substantial share of the paper, while dermatology, ophthalmology, psychiatry and the clinical sciences appear in smaller but reliably present numbers.

The practical consequence is that you cannot pass on a few strong specialties. A candidate who is excellent in cardiology and respiratory medicine but repeatedly drops marks across five or six smaller specialties can still fail. Plan coverage first, depth second.

Part 1 runs three diets a year. Each diet has an application opening date, a hard closing date, an earlier deadline for reasonable adjustments, the exam day itself and a results date several weeks later. Applications outside the published window are not accepted, and the closing date for the next diet sometimes falls before results for the current one are released.

All current diet dates, deadlines, fees and results dates are maintained on the MRCP Part 1 exam dates page, which is the page to check before booking leave or planning a resit.

There is no fixed percentage pass mark. Each diet is standard-set and scores are equated so that the standard required is comparable between diets: a slightly harder paper does not require a higher raw score. Results are reported as a pass equated score against the standard for that diet, with a breakdown by specialty.

That breakdown is useful whether you pass or fail. It shows which specialties sat below the standard, which is the natural starting point for a resit plan or for Part 2 preparation.

The Federation publishes pass-rate data by diet and by candidate group. The headline figure is less useful than the split: first-attempt candidates consistently outperform repeat attempters, and candidates who prepared with structured, broad coverage do better than those who revised selectively.

Treat published pass rates as context for planning rather than as a prediction. Your own timed-block accuracy across the full syllabus is a far better guide to readiness.

For a candidate working a full clinical rota, three to four months of consistent preparation is a reasonable starting point, at roughly 8–12 focused hours a week rising towards the exam. A resit after a near miss may need only six to ten focused weeks; significant gaps or a demanding rota may need four to five months.

The number of weeks matters less than whether the plan leaves room to meet the whole syllabus, do substantial question practice, identify weak specialties, revisit them and finish with timed full-length practice.

• Start questions on day one. Using a bank only at the end turns it into an assessment instead of a learning tool.
• Read the explanation for every item, including those you answered correctly — a lucky guess and a reasoned answer look identical in your score.
• Work in blocks rather than single questions, so you practise sustaining judgement across a paper.
• Keep an error log with a reason for each mistake, and re-test those topics rather than re-reading them.
• Use per-topic analytics to choose what to revise next, rather than gravitating towards the specialties you enjoy.
• Resist repeating the same bank until you recognise stems. Recognition is not knowledge, and it inflates your accuracy.

Part 1 is two three-hour papers on the same day. Six hours of best-of-five questions is a stamina task as much as a knowledge one, and candidates who have never sat a full-length paper commonly lose marks in the second half.

Build up through timed blocks to at least two full-length rehearsals. Time your blocks at roughly 1.8 minutes per question, and review the paper the following day rather than immediately, so the review is analytical rather than emotional.

• Uneven coverage — several specialties barely touched by the final fortnight.
• Passive revision: re-reading notes and highlighting instead of retrieval practice.
• Treating the question bank as a test at the end rather than a learning tool from the start.
• Skipping explanations for correct answers, so guesses are never converted into knowledge.
• Never practising at full length, then fading during the second paper.
• Neglecting clinical pharmacology, statistics and the clinical sciences, which are high-yield and quick to fix.
• Misreading stems under time pressure — usually a pacing problem, not a knowledge one.
• Starting too late relative to a rota, then sitting a diet before the plan has finished.

• Confirm centre location, travel and ID requirements the week before, not the night before.
• Request leave for the exam day as soon as your application is accepted, and swap nights in the fortnight beforehand.
• Answer every question — there is no negative marking, so leave nothing blank.
• Flag and move on rather than stalling: one difficult item is worth the same as an easy one.
• Eat and hydrate properly between papers; the second paper is where fatigue costs marks.
• Do not review the first paper's answers with colleagues during the break.

Passing Part 1 opens the MRCP Part 2 written examination and, in turn, PACES. Most candidates move straight into Part 2 preparation, where the same broad clinical knowledge is tested with longer vignettes and more emphasis on management decisions.

The specialty breakdown on your Part 1 score report is the most useful starting point: the areas that sat closest to the standard are usually the ones to reinforce first, and much of the Part 1 groundwork carries directly into Part 2 and PACES.

• A best-of-five question bank mapped to the full MRCP(UK) Part 1 curriculum.
• Explanations that focus on clinical reasoning, mechanisms and differentials — not just the correct answer.
• Timed exam mode that mirrors the real Part 1 paper structure and pacing.
• Per-specialty analytics and anonymised peer benchmarking so you know exactly where to focus.

Three example single-best-answer questions in the style of the MRCP Part 1 bank, with the reasoning behind the correct answer.

• How to revise for MRCP Part 1
• MRCP Part 1 syllabus guide
• MRCP Part 1 pass mark
• MRCP Part 1 pass rate: what the data shows
• MRCP Part 1 study timeline and planning
• Top 100 high-yield topics for MRCP Part 1
• Best resources for MRCP Part 1
• All revision tutorials

These full-length Examrix tutorials are free to read and pair well with question practice in the same area.

• Acid-base disorders — the classic arterial blood gas interpretation questions.
• ECG, exercise testing and cardiac biomarkers — a reliably high-yield cardiology area.
• Acute kidney injury — causes, staging and the management decisions examiners test.
• Diabetic emergencies — DKA and hyperosmolar states, step by step.
• Stroke and TIA — localisation, imaging and secondary prevention.
• Diagnostic test performance — sensitivity, specificity and predictive values for the statistics questions.
• Prescribing in special populations — clinical pharmacology in renal, hepatic and pregnancy contexts.
• Sepsis — recognition, source control and the evidence behind early management.

• MRCP Part 1 question bank — what's inside, sample question and syllabus coverage.
• MRCP Part 1 revision note previews — sample tutorials, free to read.
• MRCP Part 1 exam dates 2026 and 2027 — application windows, deadlines, fees and results dates.
• MRCP Part 1 FAQ — format, study time, marking and results.
• Revision articles — pass rates, exam dates and study plans.