The Diploma in Geriatric Medicine (DGM) has quietly become one of the most relevant postgraduate qualifications in UK healthcare — and one where the revision resources haven't kept pace with demand.
Jointly awarded by the Royal Colleges of Physicians (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow) and the British Geriatrics Society, the DGM validates competence in the assessment and management of older adults. Since 2021, eligibility has expanded beyond doctors to include nurses, pharmacists, physician associates, physiotherapists, and other allied health professionals — significantly broadening the candidate pool. The BGS estimates the exam now attracts several hundred candidates per year and growing.
The clinical content — falls, frailty, polypharmacy, dementia, delirium, continence, Parkinson's disease, capacity assessment, advance care planning — sits squarely in the day-to-day reality of primary care, acute medicine, and community services. If you work with older adults in any clinical capacity, the DGM curriculum maps to what you're already doing. Passing the exam is another matter.
The exam format
The DGM consists of a single written paper: 120 best-of-five (BOF) SBA questions, completed in 2.5 hours. It's delivered online via a proctored platform. There is no OSCE or viva component — it's pure knowledge assessment.
The questions are mapped to the DGM curriculum, which covers: comprehensive geriatric assessment, common geriatric syndromes (falls, incontinence, delirium, malnutrition), organ-system diseases as they present in older adults, pharmacology and polypharmacy, ethics and capacity (Mental Capacity Act), rehabilitation, palliative and end-of-life care, and the regulatory/governance framework.
The pass rate is not publicly reported in detail, but the BGS notes that candidates with structured preparation and clinical experience in geriatrics generally do well. The challenge is breadth: the curriculum covers a lot of ground, and geriatric medicine is full of nuanced "best answer" scenarios where multiple options are defensible.
What study resources exist
Question banks
PassGeriMed is the primary dedicated qbank. It offers SBA questions mapped to the DGM curriculum with explanations. It's the most commonly recommended resource on social media and BGS forums. Quality is generally reasonable, though the question bank size is modest. Worth buying as your core practice tool.
Munro DGM Question Bank (dgmquestionbank.com) is a very small offering — approximately 100 questions at £10. Useful as a supplement but far too small to constitute meaningful practice on its own.
Beyond these two, there is no major qbank dedicated to the DGM. No Passmedicine module, no AMBOSS section, no UWorld offering.
Textbooks
Oxford Textbook of Geriatric Medicine — the definitive reference, but enormous and not designed for exam preparation. Use it for deep dives on topics you don't understand, not for cover-to-cover reading.
Oxford Handbook of Geriatric Medicine — more practical and portable. A good companion for the exam, particularly for management algorithms and quick reference.
Brocklehurst's Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology — comprehensive academic reference. Useful for understanding the evidence base behind management decisions.
BGS learning resources — the British Geriatrics Society website hosts case studies, guidelines, and educational materials. Their "Silver Book" on emergency care for older adults is high-yield for acute presentations.
Courses
Some providers offer DGM revision courses (1–2 days, typically £200–400). These can be useful for structured review and question practice, but availability is limited and variable in quality. Check the BGS events page and postgraduate deanery listings.
What's missing
The biggest gap is volume question practice. A 120-question SBA exam requires at minimum 500–800 practice questions to develop pattern recognition and timing — and the current ecosystem offers perhaps 200–300 combined from all sources. For an exam expanding rapidly in candidate numbers, this is a significant unmet need.
Using AI tools for DGM preparation
Geriatric medicine content overlaps heavily with primary care and general internal medicine — which is where AI clinical tools can help fill the gap.
iatroX's clinical search covers NICE guidelines on dementia, falls prevention, polypharmacy review, and all the chronic disease management areas tested in the DGM (hypertension in the elderly, diabetes management targets in frail patients, CKD staging). The guidelines section includes summaries aligned to current NICE guidance on many DGM-relevant topics. The quiz engine covers general medicine and primary care MCQs — a substantial portion of which are directly relevant to geriatric practice.
For generating practice questions, you can use the clinical AI to create scenarios: "Generate 5 SBA questions about falls assessment in an 82-year-old with polypharmacy" — then verify the answers against NICE and BGS guidelines. This isn't a substitute for a validated qbank, but it's a way to generate volume practice that doesn't currently exist elsewhere.
A practical study plan
Phase 1 (Weeks 1–3): Map the curriculum. Download the DGM curriculum from the BGS website. Read each section heading and self-assess: "Could I answer 5 SBAs on this right now?" Flag everything below 3/5 confidence.
Phase 2 (Weeks 4–8): Focused study. Work through your weak areas systematically. For each topic: read the relevant NICE guideline or BGS resource, then immediately do practice questions. If PassGeriMed covers the topic, use those questions. If not, generate practice using AI tools or work through relevant MRCP Part 1 geriatrics questions (there's significant content overlap).
Phase 3 (Weeks 9–10): Timed practice and revision. Do full timed sessions: 60 questions in 75 minutes. Review every wrong answer and every question where you guessed correctly. Focus on the "best answer" reasoning — in geriatric medicine, the right answer is often the most conservative, holistic, or patient-centred option.
Key topics that catch people out: Mental Capacity Act application, DOLS/LPS framework, prescribing in frailty (START/STOPP criteria), delirium vs dementia vs depression differentiation, and advance care planning — these are DGM-specific areas where general medical knowledge isn't sufficient.
The bottom line
The DGM is clinically valuable, increasingly accessible (thanks to expanded eligibility), and well-structured as an exam. The revision resource gap is real but manageable if you're systematic. PassGeriMed plus BGS materials plus NICE guidelines plus targeted AI-assisted practice gets you most of the way. The candidates who fail are typically those who underestimate the breadth of the curriculum or who rely solely on clinical experience without structured question practice.
iatroX offers AI-powered clinical search aligned to NICE guidelines and a UK quiz engine covering geriatric medicine, primary care, and general medicine topics. UKCA-marked medical device.