This is for doctors sitting the Diploma in Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (DTM&H) after an approved course, who want a disciplined way to work through questions towards the written papers. It addresses mainly the two best-of-five MCQ papers and the parasitology recognition paper. The principal limitation you must plan around is honest and structural: there is no established, verifiable standalone product literally called "DTM&H Question Bank", and dedicated DTM&H banks are scarce — so this is a workflow you apply to whatever practice you can assemble, not a review of a single tool.
Current state: what a "DTM&H Question Bank" actually is in 2026
Lead with the finding rather than burying it. When you search for a dedicated DTM&H question bank, you do not find a mature, widely used commercial product with a published item count, an access period, an AI tutor and a price — the way you would for the MRCP or the SCEs. The DTM&H market is thin. What actually exists is a patchwork: MCQs supplied inside the approved courses (LSHTM, LSTM Liverpool, Glasgow, Sheffield and others), self-assessment questions in tropical-medicine textbooks, occasional revision decks of uncertain provenance, and general infectious-disease question banks that overlap only partially with the DTM&H syllabus.
| Attribute | "DTM&H Question Bank" — verified 21 July 2026 |
|---|---|
| A single dedicated commercial DTM&H bank | Not verifiable. No established standalone product of that name with a published count/price could be confirmed. |
| What genuinely exists | Course-provided MCQs, textbook self-assessment, and general ID/tropical banks with partial syllabus overlap. |
| AI or adaptive features | None to report for a discrete DTM&H bank, because no such discrete bank is verifiable. |
| Price and access period | Not applicable in the absence of a verifiable dedicated product; course materials are bundled with course fees. |
| iatroX's role | A general UK/ID knowledge and unseen-MCQ measurement layer — not a comprehensive DTM&H specialty bank. |
That scarcity is not a reason to abandon question practice. It is a reason to be deliberate: define the syllabus yourself, protect a pool of unseen items, and measure transfer rather than trusting a completion percentage from a thin resource. Do not let any single deck's "100% complete" fool you — as we argue in "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score", completion is not competence.
Exam anchor: the DTM&H syllabus and official material
The DTM&H written examination is set by the Society of Apothecaries of London and, per the current Guide to the Diploma (verified 21 July 2026), comprises four online components sat under live remote invigilation:
- Papers 1 and 2 — Best-of-Five MCQ: 50 questions each, 1 hour 30 minutes per paper, no negative marking, each question worth 2.5 marks (250 marks combined). Content is weighted towards clinical infectious diseases and tropical medicine.
- Paper 3 — Preventative Medicine Short Structured Questions (SSQ): five questions, all to be answered, 1 hour, 20 marks each (100 marks), covering preventative medicine and international public health. (Formerly the short-essay paper.)
- Paper 4 — Parasitology/Entomology Short Answer Questions (SAQ): 50 images of parasites or arthropods with associated questions, 1 hour 30 minutes, 3 marks each (150 marks), testing diagnostic parasitology and medical entomology.
The overall blueprint runs approximately 60% clinical infectious diseases and tropical medicine, 25% preventative medicine and international public health, and 15% non-communicable diseases. The official requirement is completion of an approved course plus these papers; the syllabus in the Apothecaries Guide is the primary source, and everything a third party sells is a claim, not a requirement. Confirm the current structure and mark scheme in the Guide before you build your plan.
Build a blueprint inventory and reserve an unseen pool
Before your first pass, turn the syllabus into an inventory. List the domains — protozoal infections (malaria, leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis, amoebiasis), helminths (schistosomiasis, filariasis, soil-transmitted, cestodes), bacterial and mycobacterial disease, arboviral and viral haemorrhagic fevers, entomology and vectors, nutrition, preventative medicine and outbreak/public-health method, and the non-communicable burden — and score your confidence in each. This is the same discipline as our blueprint-coverage matrix.
Then, crucially, ring-fence a protected pool of unseen questions you will not touch until a timed mixed assessment near the end. In a data-rich exam you would hold back part of a large bank; in a data-poor exam like the DTM&H you deliberately reserve some course MCQs, some textbook self-assessment and a set of fresh unseen items so that you retain something genuinely unseen to measure yourself against later.
The first pass: mixed by default, filtered only where foundations are weak
Start mixed. Topic-filtered blocks cue you — when every question in a block is about schistosomiasis, you stop discriminating and start pattern-matching to the block title, which the real paper never gives you. Use topic-filtered blocks only where your foundations are genuinely weak and you need to build a base (for many candidates that is entomology or the preventative-medicine method), then return to mixed as soon as the base is laid. The first pass is for exposure and coverage, not for a score you show anyone.
Review each miss with an error code, not a transcript
When you get an item wrong, do not transcribe the entire explanation into your notes — that feels productive and teaches almost nothing. Instead, assign one error code and one corrective action:
- K (knowledge gap) → one fact or rule to learn.
- D (discrimination failure — confused two similar entities) → one discriminating feature.
- P (process/pacing — ran out of time or misread) → one process fix.
- J (jurisdiction/guideline — wrong regimen or out-of-date guidance) → the correct source and its date, checked against WHO guidance or the SmPC/eMC rather than any overseas convention.
One line per miss. The corrective action is what you retest, not the paragraph you copied.
Use transfer practice before repeating the original
Repeating the exact item you failed mostly trains recognition of that item. Before you re-attempt the original, answer a new question that tests the same principle in a different wrapper — a different species, a different traveller, a different incubation period. If you can transfer the rule to an unseen item, you have learned it; if you can only get the original right, you have memorised it. This is where a general unseen layer such as iatroX earns its place: it supplies same-principle items your DTM&H materials have not shown you.
Switch to mixed timed blocks when domain floors are met
Set a floor for each domain — a minimum number of correctly-reasoned items — and switch to mixed, timed blocks once those floors are met, even if your first pass is incomplete. Finishing every last item in a thin resource is a vanity metric; arriving able to hold 1.8 minutes per MCQ across mixed content, and to read a parasitology image under Paper 4's pace, is the goal. Do not wait for 100% completion to start behaving like the exam.
Exit criteria: what actually says you are ready
You are ready to stop grinding and start final-tapering when five things are true, and none of them is "I finished the bank":
- Coverage: every blueprint domain has met its floor.
- Unseen timed performance: your score on never-seen, timed mixed items is stable and adequate — not your rehearsed percentage.
- Pacing: you consistently finish 50 MCQs inside 90 minutes with time to review flags.
- Retention: corrected rules survive a delayed retest a week later.
- Official-material calibration: your practice matches the syllabus emphasis and Paper 4's image demand.
Worked example: a seven-day plan for a travel and global-health doctor
A doctor working across travel clinics, acute infection and periodic humanitarian deployments has one job for their DTM&H practice — coverage and pacing — and uses iatroX for unseen transfer. This is a pattern, not a proprietary algorithm.
- Day 1: Two mixed 25-item blocks from your assembled DTM&H MCQs; code every miss; no explanation-reading mid-block.
- Day 2: Targeted foundation block in your single weakest domain (often entomology), then one mixed block.
- Day 3: Paper 4 practice — 20 parasitology/arthropod images under time; log the ones you cannot name in five seconds.
- Day 4: Fresh, timed unseen block in iatroX on the same principles to test transfer; check drug and prophylaxis facts against WHO guidance and the SmPC/eMC.
- Day 5: Preventative-medicine SSQ practice — plan two structured answers to time; this paper rewards public-health method, not list-recall.
- Day 6: Retest the week's misses plus a mixed timed block; record retention.
- Day 7: Update the blueprint matrix; reset next week's domain floors. Leave the reserved unseen pool untouched.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue your current materials if coverage is widening and unseen timed scores are rising.
- Supplement — the common position for DTM&H, given the scarcity — if a domain has no adequate questions: add a source for that domain only, and keep an independent unseen layer for measurement per the two-Q-bank rule.
- Switch if a resource is riddled with out-of-date regimens or non-UK framing that you cannot trust.
- Stop acquiring resources when every domain floor is met and your limiting factor is retention and image speed, not access.
Bottom line
Because a dedicated DTM&H question bank is scarce, the exam rewards candidates who impose their own structure: inventory the syllabus, assemble volume from courses and texts, review by error code, test transfer on unseen items, and exit on measurable criteria rather than completion. iatroX is not a comprehensive DTM&H specialty bank; it is the unseen-MCQ measurement layer that tells you whether a corrected rule actually transfers.
FAQ
Is a DTM&H Question Bank enough for DTM&H on its own? No — and in practice there is no single dedicated DTM&H bank comprehensive enough to be your only resource, because dedicated DTM&H banks are scarce (verified 21 July 2026). You will need to combine course MCQs, textbook self-assessment and unseen items, and you must still complete an approved DTM&H course, which is a formal requirement of sitting. Treat any deck marketed as complete DTM&H coverage as a vendor claim to verify, not a guarantee.
Which DTM&H component does a question bank not reproduce well? MCQ practice maps cleanly onto Papers 1 and 2, but it reproduces Paper 3 and Paper 4 poorly. Paper 3 is a short-structured preventative-medicine and public-health paper that rewards planned written reasoning, and Paper 4 is a 50-image parasitology and entomology recognition paper. Best-of-five practice will not train timed image recognition or structured public-health answers, so you must rehearse those two papers with images and written practice specifically.
How many DTM&H questions should I complete per day? With a thin resource, quality beats count: a sustainable target is roughly 30 to 50 mixed, timed items daily, each miss reviewed by a one-line error code, plus a short dedicated image-recognition drill for Paper 4. Completing more low-quality items faster is not progress. There is no vendor "recommended daily volume" worth citing here, because no dominant DTM&H bank exists to make the claim.
When should I stop using a question bank and move to mixed mocks? Move to mixed, timed mocks once each blueprint domain has met its floor and you can hold 1.8 minutes per MCQ — typically two to three weeks out — regardless of whether your first pass is complete. Reserve your protected unseen pool for a full-length timed mock that mirrors the two MCQ papers, and add a timed Paper 4 image set so the mock is realistic.
How should I combine a DTM&H question bank with iatroX without duplicating practice? Assign non-overlapping jobs. Use your assembled DTM&H materials for coverage, image recognition and public-health method; use iatroX only to test transfer on unseen, same-principle items and to space your misses. Because iatroX is a general UK/infection knowledge and unseen-measurement layer rather than a DTM&H-specific bank, it supplies fresh wrappers rather than duplicating the exact items you have already seen.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. Because a dedicated commercial DTM&H question bank could not be verified on that date, this article deliberately avoids quoting item counts or prices for any single "DTM&H bank"; any figure a vendor gives you is vendor-reported and should be checked on the product page. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing question bank; here its role is confined to unseen-MCQ measurement and spaced retrieval, and it is explicitly not presented as a comprehensive DTM&H specialty bank. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: the Society of Apothecaries — Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the Guide to the Diploma (2025); and, for method, the iatroX comparison hub, "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score", the blueprint-coverage matrix and the two-Q-bank rule.