The SCE Geriatric Medicine is unlike other Specialty Certificate Examinations. Where most SCEs test organ-system knowledge, geriatric medicine tests holistic patient-centred assessment — comprehensive geriatric assessment, frailty, polypharmacy, capacity, deprescribing, and the interface between medical management and social care. Your question bank must reflect this distinctive approach, not simply recycle general medical questions with elderly patients.
StudyPRN
StudyPRN's Geriatric Medicine bank contains approximately 448 questions — the smallest of any SCE specialty on their platform. For a curriculum that spans falls and bone health, delirium, dementia, frailty, stroke rehabilitation, continence, Parkinson's disease, polypharmacy, palliative care, perioperative management of older adults, safeguarding, capacity assessment, and ethics, 448 questions represents thin coverage across many domains.
The questions are written by consultant geriatricians and the clinical quality is appropriate. But the volume limitation means you may exhaust the bank well before your revision period ends. For a three-month revision period averaging 25 questions per day, you would complete the entire bank in approximately 18 days — leaving two and a half months with no new questions to practise.
Pricing follows the standard StudyPRN model — approximately £79 for three months. No adaptive learning, no spaced repetition.
iatroX
iatroX's SCE Geriatric Medicine bank contains over 1,500 questions — more than three times StudyPRN's count. The additional volume is most valuable in the domains that are uniquely geriatric: CGA framework questions (what constitutes a CGA, which patients benefit, what outcomes does it improve), Clinical Frailty Scale application, 4AT delirium screening, STOPP/START v2 criteria, Mental Capacity Act scenarios (five principles, two-stage test, best interests, IMCA, lasting power of attorney, DoLS), and deprescribing decision-making.
These domains do not appear in most other medical question banks because they are specific to geriatric practice. A question bank that draws from a broader MRCP pool and applies it to elderly patients misses the point — the SCE Geriatric Medicine tests geriatric-specific competencies, not general medicine in old people.
The adaptive algorithm ensures that cross-cutting topics (capacity assessment, deprescribing, ethical decision-making) receive proportional attention alongside organ-system conditions. Many candidates naturally focus on the clinical conditions (falls, dementia, delirium) and underweight the frameworks — the algorithm corrects this.
All included at £29 per month or £99 per year.
The verdict
StudyPRN's 448-question Geriatric Medicine bank is their weakest SCE offering by volume. For a specialty that tests breadth across clinical syndromes and cross-cutting geriatric frameworks, the limited question count is a genuine preparation concern. iatroX provides three times the volume with adaptive learning that addresses the specific revision biases common in geriatric medicine preparation.