MRCP Part 1 question bank: 3,400+ practice SBAs

3,400+ active best-of-five SBAs across 18 Part 1 specialty areas, reviewed and added to continuously.

• Best-of-five single-best-answer questions written in Part 1 style, one per clinical decision.
• Explanations covering the correct answer, the differentials and why each distractor fails.
• Timed exam mode built around the real format: two 3-hour papers of 100 questions.
• Flag and retry: revisit flagged questions and every previously incorrect answer in Smart Revision.
• Per-specialty analytics with anonymised peer benchmarking.
• Syllabus tutorials for each topic, so you can learn a subject and then test it.

MRCP Part 1 asks 200 best-of-five questions built on short clinical vignettes, so the skill being tested is choosing between close differentials under time pressure — not reciting facts. Reading alone rarely develops that skill; answering questions and reviewing the reasoning does.

Question practice also tells you where you actually stand. Per-specialty accuracy across a few thousand attempts is a far better readiness signal than how confident a topic feels after a revision session, and it makes it obvious which specialties still need work with weeks to spare.

The bank currently holds more than 3,400 active best-of-five SBAs written in Part 1 style, spread across 18 specialty areas of the curriculum. Each item presents a clinical vignette with the investigations you would realistically have, five plausible options and one best answer.

Questions are reviewed and updated as guidelines change, and new items are added continuously rather than in occasional batches, so the bank does not go stale between diets.

Coverage follows the Part 1 blueprint rather than only the popular specialties. Cardiology, respiratory medicine, gastroenterology, hepatology, nephrology, endocrinology, neurology, rheumatology, haematology and infectious diseases all have substantial question sets, alongside dermatology, ophthalmology, psychiatry and geriatric medicine.

The basic and clinical sciences that candidates most often neglect — clinical pharmacology, genetics, immunology, cell biology, statistics and study design — are mapped as their own topics, so you can revise and test them directly instead of hoping they come up.

• Every question has a written explanation of why the correct option is correct, not just a labelled answer.
• Each distractor is addressed in turn, so a near miss teaches you the discriminating feature you missed.
• Explanations include the numbers that decide questions: thresholds, cut-offs, doses and typical investigation findings.
• Where a topic has a matching Examrix tutorial, the explanation links to it so you can read the whole subject rather than one fact.

The study coach turns your recent performance into a daily plan: which topics to practise next, which previously incorrect questions are due for another attempt, and which tutorials to read for the specialties sitting below your average.

It is there to remove the daily decision of what to revise, which is where a lot of revision time quietly disappears. You can refresh the plan as your performance changes, or ignore it and drive your own revision from the analytics.

• Accuracy by specialty and subtopic, so weak areas surface as data rather than as a hunch.
• Progress over time, showing whether a topic you revised has actually improved on re-testing.
• Anonymised peer benchmarking, so you can see your accuracy in context.
• Smart Revision, which rebuilds sessions from your flagged questions and everything you previously got wrong.
• Question-level history, so you can see whether a mistake was a knowledge gap or a misread stem.

Exam mode reproduces the real structure: two three-hour papers of 100 best-of-five questions, with a timer and no explanations until you submit. Shorter timed blocks let you rehearse pacing during the working week, at roughly 1.8 minutes per question.

Tutor mode is the opposite: explanations appear as you go, which is the right setting early in revision when you are still learning topics rather than testing them.

Because the real paper spreads its questions across the whole blueprint, a candidate who is strong in two or three specialties and thin across the rest can still fail. The bank is weighted and tagged to make broad coverage easy to check, so you can see at a glance which specialties you have barely touched.

Question style follows the exam: interpretation of results and management decisions rather than isolated recall, with distractors chosen to be genuinely plausible so that guessing is not rewarded.

• Doctors sitting MRCP(UK) Part 1 for the first time and building coverage from the start.
• Candidates resitting after a near miss who need targeted practice in the specialties their score report flagged.
• International medical graduates preparing for Part 1 alongside clinical work in any health system.
• Foundation and internal medicine trainees starting early and revising in short sessions around a rota.

• Create an account and start the 3-day full-access trial — no card required.
• Do a short mixed block first so the analytics have a baseline to work from.
• Work through specialties in blocks of 20–30 questions, reading every explanation, including for correct answers.
• Use the study coach or the analytics to choose your next topic, and re-test rather than re-read.
• In the final fortnight, switch to timed exam mode and sit at least two full-length papers.

• MRCP Part 1 exam prep guide — format, syllabus breakdown and revision planning.
• 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.
• Free MRCP Part 1 sample questions — worked best-of-five examples with full explanations.
• MRCP Part 1 syllabus guide and pass mark.
• MRCP Part 1 pass rate — the published figures and what they mean for your revision.
• Free tutorials: acid-base disorders, ECG interpretation, diagnostic test performance.
• MRCP Part 1 FAQ — question numbers, exam length, marking and results.
• Revision articles — pass rates, exam dates and study plans.