The Diploma in Geriatric Medicine (DGM) is awarded by the Royal College of Physicians, developed with the British Geriatrics Society, and recognises competence in the care of older people across community, primary and acute settings. It has two parts — an online knowledge-based assessment (KBA) and a clinical OSCE — and you must pass the KBA before sitting the clinical exam. With the NHS frailty agenda growing, the DGM has become one of the more relevant diplomas in UK practice. This guide covers the current format, who can sit it, the syllabus, and how to prepare.
What the DGM is and who sits it
The DGM is an RCP credential, developed with the British Geriatrics Society, that validates the assessment and management of older adults. It has historically been taken by GPs, old-age psychiatrists and some doctors training in geriatric medicine. Since 2021 eligibility has opened to all statutorily regulated healthcare professionals — nurses, allied health professionals, pharmacists and physician associates, the last of these on the managed voluntary register until December 2026, after which GMC registration is required. One thing to plan around: the DGM is not a course, and there are no RCP or BGS lectures or workshops, so all preparation is self-directed. The DGM's relevance has grown sharply with the NHS frailty agenda, which places geriatric competence at the centre of primary care, care-home medicine and community services; integrated care board frailty programmes, care-home enhanced services and anticipatory-care initiatives increasingly specify or prefer clinicians who hold it. For a generalist, the syllabus maps closely onto work many are already doing, and the diploma formalises it. It also sits well alongside other generalist credentials, and for portfolio GPs it signals a defined competence that commissioners and employers increasingly recognise.
Eligibility
The RCP advises at least two years' post-qualification experience, with at least four months of that in a setting where you have interacted with a large number of older people.
Format: KBA, then a clinical OSCE
The KBA is a three-hour, 100 single-best-answer online assessment, and you must pass it before sitting the clinical exam. The clinical OSCE, in the format used since November 2024, consists of four stations of 15 minutes each with five minutes' reading time before each — Integrated Clinical Assessment 1, the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment, Ethical and Legal Principles in Practice, and Integrated Clinical Assessment 2 — held at the RCP Assessment Centre at The Spine in Liverpool, with two examiners per station. Both parts must be passed; you have four years from passing the KBA to complete the clinical exam, and a maximum of six attempts per component.
The syllabus
The Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment is the organising principle of the whole diploma: the medical domain (problem list, active diagnoses, medication review), the functional domain (activities of daily living), the cognitive domain (delirium and dementia screening) and the social domain. Around it sit the common geriatric syndromes — falls, delirium, dementia, incontinence, malnutrition and frailty — together with polypharmacy and deprescribing, organ-system disease as it presents in older adults, ethics and capacity under the Mental Capacity Act, rehabilitation, and palliative and end-of-life care. In practice that means being fluent in falls assessment and bone health, the recognition and management of delirium, the staging and support of dementia, continence, Parkinson's disease and movement disorders, stroke in older adults, pressure care, nutrition, and the recognition of frailty and its implications for treatment escalation. The governance and ethics strand — capacity, best-interests decisions, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards and advance care planning — runs through the clinical material rather than sitting apart from it.
2026 dates
The clinical exam runs twice yearly: 1–2 June 2026, with results on 1 July, and 2–3 November 2026, with results on 2 December, and additional dates may be added in the same weeks depending on applications. The KBA runs in its own windows; confirm the current KBA dates and all fees on the RCP site. Last reviewed June 2026.
Pass rates
The RCP and BGS do not routinely publish a headline DGM pass rate, and the candidate pool is growing steadily as eligibility widens and the frailty agenda expands.
How to prepare
Because there is no official course, you will need to build your own structure around the DGM syllabus and the CGA framework. Dedicated DGM question resources are limited, so many candidates supplement with general medicine questions, though targeted geriatric-medicine practice is more efficient where you can find it. For the clinical OSCE, rehearse the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment and the ethical and legal station specifically, since the Mental Capacity Act, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards and advance care planning recur. A practical approach is to drill the KBA with high-volume question practice across the syndromes, then rehearse the four OSCE stations as structured performances — the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment in particular benefits from being practised aloud against the clock until the framework is automatic. Give the ethics and capacity material focused attention in particular: it is examined in its own OSCE station and threads through the clinical ones, and it is an area where confident clinicians still lose marks by reasoning loosely rather than applying the Mental Capacity Act's two-stage test precisely.
Where iatroX fits
The DGM has a notably thin question-bank market. iatroX offers a DGM bank, on iatroX's subscription (£29/month or £99/year), built around a Socratic tutor that rebuilds the reasoning behind a miss; questions mapped meticulously to the DGM syllabus; spaced repetition; adaptive sequencing that returns your weak areas; and a mobile app. A standalone alternative is PassGeriMed.
Quick questions
How many parts does the DGM have? Two — a KBA and a clinical OSCE.
Do I have to be a doctor? No — since 2021 it is open to all statutorily regulated healthcare professionals.
Is there a course? No — preparation is self-directed.
Is iatroX's DGM bank free? Not in full — the bank is on iatroX's subscription (£29/month or £99/year), with free sample questions to try first.