The first year of doctoring can be resourced almost entirely for free, and this guide is deliberately generous about it: the best free option per job, including plenty that are not ours, because a new doctor served well by the ecosystem is the point. Organised by category, the way you will actually reach for them.
Clinical guidance
NICE and CKS remain the free national backbone: guidance for the big decisions, CKS for the astonishing number of ward questions that are really primary-care questions wearing a gown. SIGN adds the Scottish guideline library. Your trust intranet is the most important free resource nobody lists: local pathways outrank national elegance at the bedside. And askiatroX answers clinical questions in natural language with citations directly into NICE, CKS, SIGN and SmPC sources, free, which makes it the fast route into the same guidance rather than a substitute for it.
Medicines
The emc hosts the summaries of product characteristics, the manufacturer's definitive detail on every licensed drug, free. The Specialist Pharmacy Service publishes practical medicines guidance the wards quietly run on. Your local formulary and antimicrobial guide, usually via MicroGuide or the intranet, are the documents your prescriptions are actually judged against. And the ward pharmacist, the best free medicines resource in the building, comes with the job.
Education
e-LFH carries the mandated and foundation-curriculum e-learning free to NHS staff. Mind the Bleep is the outstanding free FY1-specific project: practical guides written for exactly your week. Zero to Finals and Geeky Medics keep their large free libraries useful well past finals, Geeky Medics especially for OSCE-style skills revision, and Life in the Fast Lane remains the free ECG education standard. Teaching from your own trust, grand rounds, FY teaching, is free CPD with attendance evidence attached; go.
Procedures
Geeky Medics' free procedure and skills guides cover the FY1 set well; your trust's clinical skills team and simulation sessions are the free supervised practice worth actively seeking; and the honest rule for anything beyond your competence is that the free resource is a senior watching you, not a video replacing one.
Calculations
iatroX carries 80+ clinical calculators free, and MDCalc remains the comprehensive free standard with the evidence behind each score attached. Whichever you use, the principle is the same: calculators for anything scored, no arithmetic under adrenaline.
Portfolio
Horus (England, Wales, Northern Ireland) or Turas (Scotland) is provided free with your programme; the free upgrade is the habit of feeding it weekly rather than in November. e-LFH certificates, teaching attendance and reflective notes all file straight in.
Clinical reasoning and knowledge
The free tier of iatroX includes askiatroX plus full question banks, notably the PSA bank, directly relevant to a new prescriber, and MRCP Part 1 for the medically inclined, giving you free adaptive retrieval practice with guideline-grounded explanations. iatroX Rounds adds the lightest daily reasoning habit going: a free daily diagnosis game, one new case each day, guess the diagnosis in as few clues as possible, streaks and an archive included. Mind the Bleep's case discussions and the free layers of the big education sites add breadth. The habit that matters more than the source: turn the week's real questions into practice questions, which is how lookups become knowledge; our guide to that loop is at /blog/turn-first-year-doctor-into-cpd-portfolio-evidence.
Wellbeing
NHS Practitioner Health provides free, confidential mental health care for doctors. The BMA's wellbeing support services, including its counselling and peer support lines, are open to all doctors. Your foundation programme's professional support unit exists for exactly the hard months, and the mess, unglamorously, remains protective infrastructure.
Rota, pay and contracts
Mind the Bleep's pay and rota explainers are the clearest free starting point for understanding your payslip. The BMA's contract guidance and rota-checking tools are the definitive versions, much of the depth being member-facing, and your guardian of safe working and exception-reporting system is a free mechanism that only works if used.
Communities
Tea & Empathy's peer-support community, the Mind the Bleep community, your cohort's group chat and your hospital's mess: free, and collectively the difference between a hard year and an isolating one. Specialty societies' free student-and-trainee tiers start mattering the moment you begin wondering about careers.
Frequently asked questions
If I could only set up five of these before day one?
Trust intranet access, the local antimicrobial guide, askiatroX, MDCalc or the iatroX calculators, and Mind the Bleep bookmarked. That set covers the first fortnight's actual needs; the fuller phone setup is at /blog/starting-fy1-2026-resources-on-my-phone.
What is genuinely worth paying for in FY1?
Very little, this year. Paid tools earn their place around postgraduate exams and heavier question-bank use; until then, the free ecosystem above is not a compromise, it is the standard kit.
Are trust libraries worth using when all this exists online?
Yes, for the two things the list cannot give: paid resources your trust licenses (point-of-care references, journals) and a librarian who will run a literature search for you, a genuinely underused free service when a real question needs proper evidence.