This guide is for dermatology higher specialty trainees, usually at ST4 and above, who planned to build their SCE Dermatology revision around BMJ OnExamination. The honest headline, checked on 20 July 2026, is that BMJ OnExamination does not publish a dedicated SCE Dermatology question bank. Its SCE catalogue covers other physician specialties. So treat what follows as a first-pass, review and exit method you apply to a bank that genuinely covers the dermatology blueprint, while keeping a protected pool of unseen questions for honest measurement.
That finding changes the plan but not the principles. A good first-pass-review-exit loop is transferable across platforms: you sample the blueprint before you personalise, you set domain floors so a rising average cannot hide untouched syllabus, you review errors by cause rather than by transcription, and you exit on measured readiness rather than bank completion. The only decision BMJ OnExamination removes from you here is whether it can be your dermatology mainstay. It cannot, because the specialty bank does not exist on the platform. What it can still contribute is adjacent general-medicine content if you already hold a subscription for another purpose.
What BMJ OnExamination offers for SCE Dermatology right now
The current state, last checked 20 July 2026, is a coverage gap rather than a feature list. Figures are vendor-reported and should be re-checked on the product pages before you buy anything.
| Item | Position for SCE Dermatology (last checked 20 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Dedicated SCE Dermatology bank | None found on onexamination.com |
| SCE specialties BMJ does carry | Acute Medicine, Endocrinology & Diabetes, Geriatric Medicine, Respiratory Medicine, Neurology, plus ESEGH, ESENeph and EECC (vendor-reported) |
| Adjacent dermatology content | Cutaneous topics appear inside general MRCP-level material, not blueprinted to the Dermatology SCE |
| "Adaptive" features | Personalised revision plans, a difficulty filter and peer comparison are marketed; no adaptive-difficulty algorithm is published |
| Price and access | BMJ's live SCE banks run from roughly £55 to £70 for one month; verify the current price on the product page |
Because the Dermatology product is absent, the practical move is to make a genuine dermatology SCE bank your mainstay, then use iatroX as the cross-specialty knowledge and unseen-measurement layer alongside it. StudyPRN publishes a Dermatology SCE bank, and dermatology-specific banks such as dermsce.com exist as well; verify their current counts and prices directly. iatroX is not a dermatology-specific SCE bank either, and this article will not pretend otherwise; it is the general-knowledge, spaced-retrieval and unseen-question layer that lets you check whether learning is transferring.
The exam you are actually sitting
The SCE in Dermatology follows the standard Specialty Certificate Examination structure used across the Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians. There are two papers of 100 best-of-five questions each, 200 questions in total, three hours per paper, sat on one day at a computer-based test centre using the Surpass platform. One mark is awarded per correct answer and there is no negative marking, so an educated elimination is always worth making. The pass mark is set for each diet by criterion-referenced standard-setting rather than being a fixed percentage, so chasing a round number in a third-party bank is the wrong target.
What changes for dermatology is the blueprint, not the format. The official Federation blueprint weights the paper heavily toward general dermatology and dermatology in primary care, at around 48 questions, followed by paediatric and genetic dermatology at about 30 and skin oncology at about 18. Skin biology and research sits near 14. A long tail of smaller domains then carries real marks: cutaneous allergy, dermatopathology, dressings and wound care, formulation and systemic therapy, genito-urinary and oral medicine, and infectious disease at roughly 10 each; photodermatology at about 8; and dermoscopy, psychodermatology and skin of colour at about 4 each. These are the Federation's figures and may vary by diet; treat any third-party topic list as an approximation of them, not a substitute.
Baseline week: measure before you personalise
Before you let any platform shape your feed, spend the first week building a baseline. Draw a small, blueprint-stratified sample of unseen questions across the domains above, ideally two or three items per domain, timed and mixed rather than filtered by topic. Because BMJ OnExamination has no dermatology set, run this baseline in iatroX or in the mock component of your chosen dermatology bank. The point is to get a first-attempt score on material you have not seen, so that later gains reflect learning rather than familiarity. Your baseline percentage is not a pass prediction; as the iatroX guide to why your Q-bank percentage is not your exam score explains, a topic-filtered average from a bank you have half-memorised tells you little about an unseen, timed paper.
First pass: set domain floors so nothing hides
Whatever bank carries your dermatology first pass, set a minimum number of attempted questions per blueprint domain rather than working to a single overall percentage. A domain floor of, say, 60 to 70 per cent of the available items in each area forces you through skin of colour, photodermatology, psychodermatology and dermoscopy, which a weakness-targeting feed might otherwise under-sample simply because they are small. This matters more when your mainstay is a genuine derm bank and BMJ is only a general-medicine adjunct: the small domains are exactly where a physician-general bank gives no help. Record attempts by domain in a simple matrix; the method is set out in the iatroX pillar on building a blueprint-coverage matrix.
Error taxonomy: name the cause of every miss
Reviewing well means separating error types, not re-reading explanations. Tag each miss as a knowledge gap, a misread stem, premature closure, a guideline or currency error, a calculation slip, or a time-pressure error. Dermatology adds two flavours worth their own tags: a morphology or pattern-recognition miss on clinical or dermoscopic images, and a dermatopathology miss where the histological description was the discriminator. A guideline error should send you to the primary source, and for medicines that means the SmPC or electronic medicines compendium and the relevant NICE or CKS guidance, never a paraphrase. Naming the cause tells you the corrective action; transcribing the answer does not.
Review interval: match the fix to the fault
Not every error deserves the same response. A pure knowledge gap deserves a short source read and then a new, unseen transfer question on the same principle a few days later, not an immediate repeat of the item you just saw explained. A misread stem or a time-pressure error deserves a pacing drill rather than more content. Premature closure deserves a deliberate differential-listing habit. Spacing the misses, and testing them on fresh items, is what converts review into retention; repeating the original question mostly trains recognition of that question.
Mixed-block switch: stop cueing yourself
Topic-filtered blocks are useful only while foundations are weak. Once a domain clears its floor and your first-attempt accuracy on it is stable, move that domain into timed, mixed, random blocks. Topic filters quietly cue you: when every stem is a pigmented-lesion question, "melanoma" is primed. The real paper interleaves the whole blueprint, so your revision should converge on that before exam day. A reasonable objective criterion is to shift to majority-mixed practice once two-thirds of domains have cleared their floor, even if a few small domains remain incomplete.
Exit criteria: readiness, not completion
Stop when the measurements say you are ready, not when a progress bar reaches 100 per cent. Sensible exit criteria are: every blueprint domain has cleared its coverage floor; first-attempt accuracy on unseen, mixed, timed blocks is stable across at least two sittings; your pace comfortably fits 100 questions into three hours with review time; retention checks on previously missed items hold up after a week; and you have calibrated against genuinely fresh material rather than a bank you have recycled. Completing a bank is not one of these criteria.
A seven-day plan around clinical work
Here is a realistic week for a trainee revising around a full rota, using a dermatology SCE bank for the content job and iatroX for unseen transfer practice. No proprietary-algorithm claims are made; this is ordinary spaced practice.
- Monday: 30 blueprinted questions in your derm bank on the largest domain, general and primary-care dermatology; tag every miss.
- Tuesday: a 20-minute source read on the three worst misses, then 15 unseen iatroX items testing the same principles.
- Wednesday: 30 questions on paediatric, genetic and skin-oncology material; tag misses.
- Thursday: a 40-question timed mixed block; review by error type, not by transcription.
- Friday: the small domains, photodermatology, dermoscopy, skin of colour and psychodermatology, to keep floors moving.
- Saturday: a timed, unseen iatroX block across mixed topics as your weekly readiness check; log first-attempt accuracy and pace.
- Sunday: rest, or a short spaced review of the week's misses.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
Use measurable gaps, not novelty or sunk cost.
| Situation | Action |
|---|---|
| You are relying on BMJ OnExamination as your derm mainstay | Switch: it has no Dermatology SCE bank; adopt a genuine derm bank |
| Domain floors incomplete, weeks remaining | Continue the first pass; keep floors, not the average, as your target |
| Floors met but unseen timed accuracy weak | Supplement with unseen transfer practice in iatroX; diagnose error types |
| Coverage, accuracy, pace and retention all stable on fresh material | Stop adding banks; rehearse full mocks and rest |
Frequently asked questions
Is BMJ OnExamination enough for SCE Dermatology on its own? No, and the reason is straightforward rather than a matter of quality: as of 20 July 2026 BMJ OnExamination does not publish a dedicated SCE Dermatology question bank, so it cannot be your mainstay for this exam. If you already subscribe for general medicine, its cutaneous content within the wider material is a minor supplement at best; the specialty preparation must come from a bank that is actually blueprinted to the Dermatology SCE.
Which SCE Dermatology component does BMJ OnExamination not reproduce well? Because there is no dermatology product, it reproduces none of the derm blueprint, and in particular it does not train the visual and pattern-recognition load, clinical morphology, dermoscopy and dermatopathology, that distinguishes dermatology from general medicine. No online bank reproduces the exact Surpass timing and interface either, so rehearse those conditions in full-length mocks in whichever dermatology bank you adopt.
How many BMJ OnExamination questions should I complete per day for SCE Dermatology? This question does not apply, because there are no BMJ OnExamination dermatology questions to complete. Working in a genuine derm bank, a sustainable rate around clinical work is roughly 30 to 50 questions per day with full review, prioritising the review over raw volume; a smaller number reviewed properly beats a larger number skimmed.
When should I stop using BMJ OnExamination and move to mixed mocks? For dermatology specifically, you were never able to start with it, so the real question is when to move your chosen derm bank from topic blocks to mixed mocks: do that once each blueprint domain has cleared its coverage floor and your first-attempt accuracy on filtered blocks is stable, then rehearse two-paper, timed mixed mocks in the final one to two weeks.
How should I combine BMJ OnExamination with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each tool one job. If you hold BMJ OnExamination for another specialty or for general medicine, keep it there and do not force a dermatology role on it. Use a dermatology SCE bank for content and iatroX for unseen, timed transfer practice and spaced retrieval, so that iatroX measures what has stuck rather than re-testing items you have already memorised. The two-Q-bank rule sets out how to keep a clean measurement bank.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 20 July 2026; all platform figures are vendor-reported and were correct at the time of checking, so verify current counts, prices and product availability on the vendors' own pages before purchase. Disclosure: iatroX operates a UK question bank and is therefore a competitor to the products discussed; iatroX is not a dermatology-specific SCE bank, and its role here is confined to cross-specialty knowledge, unseen-question measurement and spaced retrieval, which the dermatology banks do not claim to be your only measurement layer. Corrections are welcome through the feedback route on iatrox.com. References: the Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians SCE Dermatology page and the SCE Dermatology blueprint (thefederation.uk); BMJ OnExamination SCE resources collection (onexamination.com); StudyPRN Dermatology SCE product page (studyprn.com); and the iatroX comparison hub and the note on why your Q-bank percentage is not your exam score.