This guide is for the DOccMed candidate who wants to calibrate their revision against the exam body's own material rather than a vendor's marketing. The Faculty of Occupational Medicine (FOM) is the awarding body, so its resources are the gold standard for format and cognitive level. The principal limitation is scarcity: the FOM publishes guidance, a portfolio template, a reading list and just seven illustrative example questions — not a full specimen paper — so the official set calibrates your style and standard but cannot supply revision volume.
What the Faculty of Occupational Medicine actually provides right now
The FOM is the exam body, not a question vendor, so "current-state" here means official documents rather than a product with a price. The summary was last checked on fom.ac.uk on 21 July 2026; confirm each item on the FOM site before relying on it.
| Official FOM resource | What it is | Cost / access |
|---|---|---|
| DOccMed regulations and guidance | The authoritative rules: format, eligibility, portfolio requirements, marking | Free to download |
| Further guidance for the MCQ exam | Notes on the written paper's structure and expectations | Free to download |
| Viva examination guidance | What the oral assessment covers and how it is conducted | Free to download |
| DOccMed portfolio template | The current template for the two required written reports | Free to download |
| Recommended reading list | The FOM's curated source list for the syllabus | Free, referenced on the site |
| "Diploma in Occupational Medicine — example questions" (PDF) | Seven illustrative best-fit questions with realistic workplace stems | Free; unanswered — no explanations |
| AI / adaptive / question bank | None — the FOM does not run a practice bank | Not applicable |
The headline for planning is unambiguous: the FOM gives you the rules and a tiny window onto house style, but it does not give you a bank, a mock, or worked answers. Everything past those seven examples has to come from a commercial resource or your own reading — which is exactly why calibration, not volume, is the job this material does.
The exam anchor: the format the official material describes
The FOM regulations define DOccMed as two components completed within five years. The knowledge gate is an MCQ paper of 80 best-fit questions in 1 hour 45 minutes with no negative marking. The second component is the portfolio and viva: two written reports — one personally examined clinical case and one workplace assessment covering hazard identification and risk reduction — followed by an oral in which two examiners each question you for around ten minutes. Eligibility requires GMC registration (or an eligible qualification) plus a FOM-approved training course of at least 55 taught hours across the Introductory, Effects of Work on Health, Clinical Occupational Health and Practical modules. Note the distinction that matters for calibration: the FOM sets the standard and the style, while commercial banks and courses interpret it. When their emphasis differs from the FOM's own examples, trust the FOM.
What is genuinely official — and what only looks official
Candidates routinely conflate three tiers of material, and separating them is the first calibration move. Tier one is genuinely official and definitive: the regulations, the MCQ and viva guidance, the portfolio template and the seven example questions. Tier two is FOM-adjacent: the approved training courses, which the FOM sanctions to deliver teaching but which set their own practice questions. Tier three is commercial preparation — question banks and revision guides that may be excellent but carry no official imprimatur, even when they describe themselves as "FOM-style". Only tier-one material should anchor your sense of the real cognitive level. Everything else is a hypothesis about the exam that you test against tier one.
Extracting the signals from seven questions
Seven items sounds trivial, but a careful read of the official example set yields a surprising amount of calibration signal. Here is what to extract, and what the FOM examples actually show.
| Signal | What the official FOM examples reveal |
|---|---|
| Question format | Best-fit items with a clinical or workplace scenario followed by four to five statement options (a–e) |
| Stem length | Moderate to lengthy — two to four sentences describing a realistic workplace situation, not one-line factual recall |
| Cognitive level | Application and judgement, not pure recall — you are asked what to do or report, given a scenario |
| Domain spread | Broad even across seven items: cold-environment hand disorders, a food-poisoning outbreak and RIDDOR reporting, mental-health disability and employment law, pregnancy and occupational travel risk, unfair dismissal, chemical hazard (vinyl chloride), shift-work health effects |
| Timing | 80 items in 105 minutes implies roughly 79 seconds per question — brisk but not frantic |
| Negative marking | None — so never leave a blank; a considered guess has no downside |
| Answers/explanations | None provided — the official set trains recognition of style, not of correct answers |
The single most useful signal is the cognitive level. The FOM's own examples are scenario-driven application questions spanning clinical occupational health, hazard control and — prominently — UK law and reporting. If your commercial bank is dominated by short factual-recall stems, it is under-pitching the exam; if it is all UK statute with little clinical reasoning, it is over-narrow. The official set is the ruler you hold both against.
A calibration matrix: official examples versus your commercial bank
Build this side by side without copying any item text. The point is to compare properties, not content.
| Property | FOM example set (official) | Your commercial DOccMed bank |
|---|---|---|
| Typical stem length | Scenario, 2–4 sentences | Measure your own: count sentences on a sample of 20 |
| Dominant cognitive level | Application / judgement | Score each of 20 items as recall vs application |
| Law/ethics weighting | High — appears in several of seven | Estimate the proportion of legal/ethical items |
| Hazard and surveillance content | Present and specific (chemicals, shift work) | Check for named hazards and surveillance triggers |
| Timing feel at ~79 s/item | Comfortable to read once, decide once | Time a 20-item block and compare |
| Answer rationale | None — style only | Are explanations present and sourced? |
Where the two columns diverge, you have a diagnosis. A commercial bank that is easier, shorter-stemmed or more factual than the FOM examples will flatter your percentage and under-prepare your reasoning; one that is harder or more esoteric may dent confidence without reflecting the real standard. Neither is disqualifying — you simply adjust how much weight you give the bank's score.
Using discrepancies diagnostically
Treat every mismatch as information rather than a problem. If your bank scores you at 85% but its stems are one-liners while the FOM's are scenarios, your true application accuracy is unknown and probably lower — so add scenario practice and discount the percentage. If your bank buries you in obscure toxicology the FOM examples never touch, do not let a low score there panic you; weight it against the official spread, which is broad but mainstream. The discipline is the same one behind the completion-is-not-coverage guide: map what you have actually tested against the real blueprint, and do not mistake a finished bank for a covered syllabus.
Preserve the calibration value: sit it unseen, timed, once
The seven official questions are a non-renewable calibration asset. Their value lies entirely in facing them cold. If you read them early, look up the topics, and revisit them repeatedly, you convert genuine reasoning into mere recognition and destroy their diagnostic worth. So ring-fence them: do not open the PDF until you have done enough teaching to attempt them honestly, then sit all seven timed and unseen, in one go, and mark how your reasoning felt rather than chasing a "correct" answer the FOM does not publish. This is the general rule for all scarce official material — sit it unseen, timed and once — and it is why an unseen commercial layer is needed for the repeatable practice the official set cannot provide.
Translating findings into quotas and conditions
Turn the calibration into a plan for the remaining weeks. If the FOM examples show your bank under-pitches application, set a quota weighted toward scenario items and mixed timed blocks rather than raw recall drills. If law and reporting are prominent in the official set but thin in your revision, ring-fence dedicated blocks on the Equality Act 2010, RIDDOR thresholds, COSHH and health-surveillance triggers. Set the practice conditions to mirror the official timing — around 79 seconds per item, no blanks left, single decisive read — so that pacing is trained, not just knowledge.
A worked seven-day plan: FOM material to calibrate, iatroX to measure
Give each resource one job, and make no proprietary-algorithm claims — the spacing below is a manual schedule you run yourself, with iatroX as the neutral unseen-measurement layer (its UK Q-bank at quiz-landing).
- Day 1 (calibrate): Sit the seven FOM example questions cold and timed. Note stem style, cognitive level and the domains they touch. This is your reference standard for the week.
- Day 2 (map): Read the FOM MCQ guidance and reading list; mark which blueprint domains your current revision under-serves relative to the official spread.
- Day 3 (unseen measurement): Sit a fresh, timed 20-item block in iatroX on unseen material, matched to the ~79 s/item pace. Record first-attempt accuracy as your transfer baseline.
- Day 4 (target law/ethics): Focused study on the legal and reporting content the FOM examples emphasise; end with a short timed block.
- Day 5 (interleave): Mixed timed block combining hazards, surveillance and law so retrieval competes across domains.
- Day 6 (portfolio/viva): Use the FOM portfolio template and viva guidance to rehearse the oral component the MCQ cannot cover.
- Day 7 (re-measure and route): Repeat an unseen iatroX block and compare against Day 3. Movement in unseen accuracy — not familiarity with the seven examples — is your progress signal.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue leaning on FOM material as your calibration anchor throughout — the regulations, guidance and examples never stop being the standard.
- Supplement with a commercial bank for volume the moment you have wrung the calibration signal from the seven examples — which is almost immediately, given their number.
- Switch your interpretation of a commercial bank's score if it diverges sharply from the FOM examples in stem style or cognitive level; recalibrate rather than abandon.
- Stop treating the seven examples as practice once you have sat them once — re-reading them teaches recognition, not reasoning.
The bottom line
The FOM's own material is the definitive guide to DOccMed's style and standard, and every candidate should sit the seven example questions unseen and read the guidance closely. But it is a calibration instrument, not a revision engine: with no full specimen paper and no worked answers, the official set tells you what "good" looks like and leaves the volume to you. Use it to tune a commercial bank and an unseen measurement layer such as iatroX, and judge readiness on unseen timed accuracy rather than on how well you now recognise seven familiar questions.
FAQ
Is Faculty of Occupational Medicine Resources enough for DOccMed on its own? No — and it is not designed to be. The FOM provides the regulations, guidance, a portfolio template, a reading list and seven unanswered example questions (verified on fom.ac.uk, 21 July 2026); that is enough to calibrate your style and standard but nowhere near enough question volume to prepare on. Treat it as the reference layer and supply practice from a commercial bank plus an unseen measurement source.
Which DOccMed component does Faculty of Occupational Medicine Resources not reproduce well? It does not reproduce repeatable MCQ practice at all — there is no bank and no full specimen paper, only seven illustrative items. It also cannot rehearse the viva interactively, though its viva guidance and portfolio template describe what the oral and written components require better than any third party can.
How many Faculty of Occupational Medicine Resources questions should I complete per day for DOccMed? Only seven exist, and you should complete them once — sat cold, timed and unseen — not daily. Rehearsing them repeatedly destroys their calibration value by turning reasoning into recognition; your daily question quota should come from a commercial bank and an unseen layer, with the FOM examples reserved as a one-off reference standard.
When should I stop using Faculty of Occupational Medicine Resources and move to mixed mocks? You never stop using the regulations, guidance and reading list — keep them open throughout. You "stop" only in the narrow sense of not re-sitting the seven example questions after your single calibration run. Move to mixed timed mocks for volume immediately, while continuing to check their style and standard against the official material.
How should I combine Faculty of Occupational Medicine Resources with iatroX without duplicating practice? Use FOM material to define the target — style, cognitive level and domain spread — then use iatroX unseen blocks to measure whether you hit it, never re-testing the same items. The FOM set is your ruler; iatroX is your repeatable, unseen measurement. Keeping them in separate roles is the two-Q-bank rule and prevents the familiarity that inflates a practised score.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. The DOccMed format (80 best-fit questions, 1 hour 45 minutes, no negative marking) and the existence and content of the seven example questions were verified on fom.ac.uk; the FOM publishes no full specimen paper and no worked answers, and this should be confirmed directly before you rely on it. Occupational-medicine content, including any medicines detail, should be checked against current UK legislation, the SmPC/eMC and NICE and CKS guidance rather than a memorised source. Disclosure: iatroX operates a UK question bank and could be seen as competing with commercial DOccMed resources; we have confined iatroX's role to unseen transfer and measurement and make no claim that it reproduces the FOM's official material. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: Faculty of Occupational Medicine — DOccMed regulations, MCQ and viva guidance, portfolio template and reading list — fom.ac.uk; FOM — Diploma in Occupational Medicine example questions (PDF) — fom.ac.uk; Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score; question-bank completion is not coverage; iatroX comparison hub — https://www.iatrox.com/compare.