11 Medicine Question Banks every medical student should know about

Medicine Question Banks - the new study method

Standard medical textbooks are becoming a thing of the past, and most of the studying nowadays takes place in a virtual space. No surprise considering the hundreds of pages of dry medical knowledge that the textbooks offer, not to mention their price.

Nowadays, the amount of different websites and apps that students can use to advance their knowledge is massive, and all of them provide a slightly different variety of resources and apply varying study techniques. During my medical school time, certainly, the most popular way of studying was using question banks. There are multiple reasons why these are so popular, including cheaper prices and being able to revise on the go using your phone, but the most important one is that they provide practice on the exact same type of questions a medical student will get on the majority of their exams.

What are the exams like?

The exams in a UK medical school are mostly divided into two types - OSCEs, the practical exams where you get 7 minutes to take part in a simulated scenario and play doctor, and written exams which generally are composed of single best answer multiple choice questions.

Single-best-answer questions are a type of multiple-choice exam that tests one’s knowledge in a particular way. Whereas traditional multiple choice questions can only have one right answer, in a single best answer all the answers might be right, but there will be one that is better than others. Think of a new patient who needs to be started on hypertensive medication, with all the answers being hypertensives - one of these answers will be most appropriate for that particular patient with their particular background in that particular scenario. It is important to realize that every single bit of information in the stem matters and will guide you closer to the correct answer.

So what are the pros and cons of this type of learning?

1. Test your knowledge with exam-style questions - The most obvious advantage of question banks is the ability to test your knowledge and problem-solving skills with exam-type questions. They often test critical thinking and knowledge application, and the majority of medschools will include various levels of difficulty when it comes to questions in their exams to test their student body, with the hardest ones testing critical thinking and applied knowledge.

2. Exam-like simulation settings - normally you can pick the length of the session, and the amount of questions and topics to be covered, and in this way practice under the time pressure, which will come in handy during the day of the exam when you need to assess the speed you can spend on each question, and most importantly whether to actually take that bathroom break.

3. Trace your progress - this feature is useful to know whether you are making overall progress, and will also allow you to spot the weakest areas of your knowledge.

4. Help you start spotting the keywords and learning red flags- Think along the lines of ‘worst headache of my life’, or ‘new diarrhea in a child who recently visited a farm’. Similarly, red flag symptoms are extremely important to know about so there is emphasis on this as well

Best Question Bank study resources

1. BMJ OnExamination

A free subscription allows you to do a certain amount of questions per day. I found this to be one of the more useful question banks, even though I never paid a full subscription for it. Really comprehensive and educational explanations, and questions which are a bit harder than on some other platforms. It is perfectly complemented by BMJ Best Practice, which I use to this day in my medical practice. BMJ Best Practice offers amazing summary pages of diseases as well as articles allowing you to learn assessments of the most common presentations.

2. Passmedicine

Probably the all-time favorite of UK students and the platform that was used the most by my peers. Personally, I found some of the questions extremely niche or too complicated. Unfortunately, they also do not offer any videos to further understanding and I found their textbook topics to be too short and lacking in information. Still a good platform to use to complement one’s studies.

3. QuesMed

My personal favorite towards my finals with a good question bank, straightforward explanations, and excellent videos explaining the concepts that are structured around answering exam-style questions and then explaining the reasoning behind the answer. I found this to be the most effective way for my revision. All lectures are also uploaded on YouTube! They also launched the OSCE platform after my graduation, which I personally did not have a chance to use, but it looks like a great resource to practice with other students. Extra points for the IG meme page!

4. BiteMedicine

Also one of my favorite resources that I first came across at the start of the pandemic due to their series of free lectures. All of their lectures are uploaded to YouTube and each question in their question bank links to a specific topic from their own textbook for you to further read up on. Worked amazing for me as I prefer to revise the entire topic/disease if I answered the question incorrectly as it helps me make sure I cover all the gaps in my knowledge. Their question bank also has some scenario-based questions - based on one scenario you are required to answer 4-6 different questions - very helpful as makes you really test your knowledge of the topic in more depth.

5. Geeky Medics

Perhaps best known for its OSCE resources online, especially wonderful OSCE examination videos, Geeky Medics actually has a large question bank you can access for free. I found this question bank to be very useful, with good explanations and useful comment sections where other users could clarify further if someone had any questions. The level of questions is very similar to the majority of questions in my exams.

6. Medbullets and orthobullets

Orthobullets is focused on orthopedics, which allows you to do some simple revision of these topics, as I found usual question banks do not include many questions from this area. Medbullets has content divided into preclinical and clinical years and I found their questions to be a good challenge. Made for US STEP exams.

7. Pastest

I used pastest at the beginning of my medical school journey. Some feel the questions are quite hard with some of them being very niche and personally I did not feel they correlated well with the style and content of questions our medical school was giving us on exams. Better for learning and understanding medicine, and worse for getting used to what questions come up in medical exams. Good way of testing oneself just before the exam.

8. Capsule

A very useful resource that is mapped to the UKMLA curriculum. Good for revision as the questions have a good grounding in clinical presentations and the management and investigations of different conditions.

9. PLABABLE

Even though it is made for medical students and doctors planning to work in the UK, I found the resources available through this app to be excellent and they often times helped me visualize and understand concepts better than resources provided with explanations of many other question banks. I ended up making a chunk of my notes from their extra resources.

10. Clinical Revision

Small question bank of 84 questions, with a textbook in development in a similar format to almost a doctor resources. Aimed for students in clinical years.

11. Medguide

Variety of short focusing on specific theme MCQ quizzes. The sections are small so allow for quick revision without too much effort, and the explanations given under each question are well written. Good if you want to test your knowledge of specific conditions or brush up on that pre-clinical or anatomy knowledge! Bonus points for adding a level of difficulty for the quizzes.