This plan is for higher specialty trainees (typically ST4+) sitting the SCE in Respiratory Medicine who use, or are considering, BMJ OnExamination and want to avoid the commonest mistake: burning through every item early, so nothing is left to measure readiness. It addresses the SCE's single component — written best-of-five knowledge. The principal limitation to plan around is bank size: a focused respiratory bank is a good spine but a finite one, so preserving unseen questions is the whole game.
What BMJ OnExamination offers for SCE Respiratory Medicine right now
The figures below are taken from the product page, are vendor-reported and were last checked on 20 July 2026. Confirm the current count, price and access length before you subscribe.
| Item | BMJ OnExamination for SCE Respiratory Medicine (vendor-reported, 20 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Question volume | 190+ questions, written by specialist clinicians and mapped to the respiratory curriculum |
| Access | Subscriptions from 1 to 12 months; £54.99 (1 month) rising to £134.99 (12 months) |
| Personalisation | Difficulty selection, recap of items found hard, daily tracking and a revision plan |
| Mock tests | Timed mocks curated by the BMJ editorial team |
| Extras | Group-learning leaderboard and offline app access |
| Adaptive AI | No disclosed adaptive engine; personalisation is filter- and plan-based |
At around 190 items, this is a curated spine rather than a high-volume bank, and that shapes the strategy. There is no adaptive algorithm to trust, which means you can and must audit your own coverage — and it means a bank this size will be exhausted well before exam day for most candidates, making a second, unseen source almost essential for measurement.
The exam you are actually sitting
The SCE in Respiratory Medicine has the standard SCE structure: two papers of 100 best-of-five questions each — 200 in total — three hours per paper, one day, computer-based on Surpass at a test centre, one mark per correct answer, no negative marking. Answer everything. The distinguishing feature is the blueprint, and the authoritative version is the JRCPTB Respiratory Medicine curriculum summarised on the Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians' SCE pages. Respiratory questions lean on interpretation — lung-function tests, arterial blood gases, imaging and pleural-fluid analysis — as much as on management, so your coverage map should include those interpretive skills explicitly. Treat the official curriculum, not a vendor topic list, as the requirement.
Baseline week: measure before you personalise
Take a short, blueprint-stratified sample under timed conditions before any revision plan starts shaping your feed — roughly 40–60 questions spread across airways disease (asthma and COPD), pneumonia and lower respiratory infection, tuberculosis, interstitial lung disease, pleural disease (effusion, pneumothorax, mesothelioma), lung cancer, pulmonary vascular disease (pulmonary embolism and pulmonary hypertension), sleep-disordered breathing, bronchiectasis and cystic fibrosis, and respiratory failure with non-invasive ventilation. Record the shape of the result, not the headline number — the reasoning in Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score applies directly. You want to know which domains and which interpretive skills collapse under time before the difficulty filter starts choosing for you.
First pass: set domain floors so a rising score cannot hide gaps
The trap with any personalised feed is a rising overall percentage sitting on untouched domains. Set a minimum number of attempted items for every blueprint area and refuse to trust the headline until all floors are met. In respiratory revision, the reliably under-attempted corners are occupational and environmental lung disease, pulmonary hypertension, the rarer interstitial diseases and sleep medicine — precisely the areas a comfortable score can hide. Use BMJ OnExamination's topic filters to work the curriculum systematically rather than letting "recap the hard ones" pull you back into airways disease you already know.
An error taxonomy that changes what you do next
Tag every miss with one code, because the code sets the remedy:
- Knowledge gap — the fact or guideline was unknown.
- Misread stem — the age, the gas values, the "except" or the timeline were misread.
- Premature closure — you settled on COPD or asthma before reading the whole vignette.
- Guideline error — outdated or non-UK management (asthma, COPD, pleural infection, lung cancer pathways).
- Calculation error — A–a gradient, predicted values, oxygen content, transfer factor.
- Time-pressure error — correct with more seconds.
Knowledge gaps get a short sourced read and a fresh transfer item; guideline errors get one sourced correction from current NICE, BTS/SIGN and specialty-society guidance plus the SmPC/eMC for drug specifics; misreads and premature closure get stem-marking drills; calculation and interpretation errors get repeated timed practice until fluent; time-pressure errors get mixed timed blocks.
Review intervals: transfer question, spaced review or a short read
Re-answering the same BMJ item tomorrow tests recognition. Set the interval by code instead. Knowledge gaps deserve a short read now and a new item on the same principle in a fortnight. Guideline errors deserve one sourced correction and a diarised spaced review. Interpretation skills — reading a flow-volume loop or a blood gas — deserve short, repeated, spaced drills. Immediate repeats are reserved for calculation methods. Because the bank is small, you will quickly run out of unseen respiratory items to test transfer, which is exactly why you protect a separate unseen pool.
The mixed-block switch: objective criteria
Move from topic blocks to timed, mixed, random blocks when three conditions are met — not when the bank is finished:
- Every domain floor is cleared, including the interpretive skills.
- First-attempt accuracy on unseen items is stable across at least two mixed samples.
- You are holding roughly one minute per item with time to review flags.
With a 190-item bank, you may hit these criteria before you have "used up" every question, and that is fine. Readiness is defined by covered-and-stable, not by exhausted.
Exit criteria: what "ready" actually looks like
Consolidate rather than grind when you can evidence all five: coverage across the JRCPTB respiratory blueprint including interpretation; stable first-attempt performance on unseen mixed blocks; pacing that fits two three-hour papers with review time; retention on spaced items unseen for two weeks; and a calibration check against the Federation's official SCE example questions. The official sample is the calibration gold standard; no vendor bank substitutes for it. Bank completion is not on the list — and with a bank this size, completion will arrive early and mean little on its own.
A worked seven-day plan for a busy trainee
One sustainable week around clinical work, with BMJ OnExamination doing one job — structured respiratory coverage and curated mocks — and iatroX doing another: unseen, timed transfer measurement across core internal medicine and the cross-specialty knowledge respiratory questions assume. No claim is made about a hidden algorithm.
| Day | BMJ OnExamination (depth) | iatroX (unseen measurement) |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | 12 topic items: interstitial lung disease | Tag misses by error code |
| Tue | 12 topic items: pleural disease | 10 unseen mixed items, timed |
| Wed | 12 topic items: pulmonary vascular disease | Spaced review of Monday |
| Thu | 12 topic items: lung cancer pathways | 10 unseen mixed items, timed |
| Fri | Curated BMJ mock, timed | Log pacing and flags |
| Sat | Re-teach two weakest domains and one interpretive skill | 20 unseen mixed items, timed |
| Sun | Rest or a short blood-gas drill | Weekly review: update domain floors |
The split is the point. BMJ OnExamination builds and drills; iatroX stays unseen so it can measure, as set out in the two-Q-bank rule. iatroX is not a respiratory-specific SCE bank and should not replace BMJ's specialty depth; it is the cross-specialty UK knowledge and unseen-MCQ layer that keeps your measurement honest, which matters more, not less, when the specialty bank is small.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
Continue with BMJ OnExamination while domain floors are filling and your unseen score is trending up. Supplement — and with a ~190-item bank this is likely — when you approach the end of the questions with weeks to run and need unseen volume, or when specific domains stay weak. Switch primary bank only for a measurable coverage reason, not novelty; the comparison hub helps if you are choosing rather than optimising. Stop adding questions and consolidate when the five exit criteria are met. Every branch is a measurable gap, never sunk cost.
Frequently asked questions
Is BMJ OnExamination enough for SCE Respiratory Medicine on its own? For a trainee with a solid respiratory foundation, its 190+ curated items (vendor-reported, 20 July 2026) and curated mocks are a reasonable spine — but at this size it is more likely than a larger bank to leave you short of unseen volume for measurement. Most candidates will finish it well before the exam. Treat it as a strong core to be supplemented with unseen mixed practice, rather than as a complete solution by itself.
Which SCE Respiratory Medicine component does BMJ OnExamination not reproduce well? The SCE has no practical or OSCE station, so nothing of that kind needs reproducing — it is entirely written best-of-five. What a 190-item bank cannot give you is sustained unseen volume: once worked through, it tests recognition, not fresh reasoning. It may also under-sample the interpretation-heavy items — lung function, blood gases, imaging — relative to their weight in the exam, so build extra interpretive practice deliberately.
How many BMJ OnExamination questions should I complete per day for SCE Respiratory Medicine? With around 190 items, roughly 8–12 new questions on weekdays plus review clears the bank across four to six weeks with room for mixed blocks and a mock. Because the bank is small, resist the urge to rush it: slow, error-coded review with spaced transfer practice extracts far more from 190 items than a fast, passive pass, and it delays the point at which you run out of unseen material.
When should I stop using BMJ OnExamination and move to mixed mocks? When your domain floors are cleared, your first-attempt accuracy on unseen items is stable, and your pacing fits the paper — regardless of how many BMJ questions remain. With a smaller bank you may reach these signals with questions to spare; that is expected. At that point make timed mixed blocks, interpretive drills and the Federation's official sample your main activity, using BMJ only to re-drill named weak domains.
How should I combine BMJ OnExamination with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give them separate jobs. BMJ OnExamination is your build-and-drill respiratory spine; iatroX is your unseen, cross-specialty measurement layer, kept separate so it can test transfer on items you have never seen. This division matters especially with a small specialty bank, because it gives you a durable source of unseen questions once BMJ's items are used up. Learn the respiratory depth in BMJ, then measure retention with fresh, timed iatroX items.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 20 July 2026. Vendor figures (question counts, prices and access periods) are reported by BMJ OnExamination and StudyPRN and can change without notice; verify the current numbers on the product pages before purchase. Disclosure: iatroX operates a UK-focused question bank and clinical-knowledge platform and therefore competes with the products discussed; this article confines iatroX's role to jobs the audited product does not itself claim — unseen, timed cross-specialty measurement — rather than to specialty-specific SCE coverage. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com. References: the Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians (MRCP(UK)) SCE pages and the JRCPTB Respiratory Medicine curriculum for the official format and blueprint; the BMJ OnExamination SCE Respiratory Medicine product page for vendor figures; and the iatroX framework articles on question-bank completion versus coverage and interpreting your Q-bank percentage.
Run a fresh, timed SCE Respiratory Medicine block in iatroX →