Physician associate candidates face a resource gap that doctors do not. Where medical students choose between several large, established question banks, PA students preparing for the Physician Associate Registration Assessment have very few options — and most charge. iatroX's PA bank is free, with no subscription, built around an adaptive engine and a Socratic tutor and mapped to the PARA blueprint. This guide explains what the free bank covers, how it compares with what little else exists, and how to structure revision for the knowledge assessment. Figures are as of mid-2026 — confirm current details with the RCP and each provider.
The exam, briefly
The PARA — formerly the PA National Examination, or PANE — is delivered by the Royal College of Physicians on behalf of the GMC, and it has two components: a knowledge-based assessment and a 14-station objective structured clinical examination. Candidates must pass both to be eligible for GMC registration. The knowledge-based assessment is an online paper of 200 single-best-answer questions, sat across four one-hour sessions with breaks — roughly 83 seconds a question — testing applied clinical knowledge across medicine, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, psychiatry and emergency medicine. During the GMC's transition period, sittings up to late 2026 use a hybrid blueprint drawn from both the 2012 framework and the 2023 PA curriculum; afterwards the 2023 curriculum applies. From 13 December 2026, GMC registration — and therefore a PARA pass — is required to work as a PA in the UK (confirm current arrangements with the GMC and RCP).
What iatroX's free PARA bank gives you
iatroX's PA bank is free to use in full — not a trial or a locked taster. It is built around five things: a Socratic tutor that works back through the reasoning behind a wrong answer; questions mapped to the PARA blueprint's clinical domains; spaced repetition that returns missed material at widening intervals; an adaptive engine that surfaces your weakest domains dynamically and looks across domain boundaries; and native iOS and Android apps. PARA is one of iatroX's free core banks — alongside MRCP Part 1, MRCEM and the PSA — so there is nothing to pay; the platform's other banks sit on a £29-a-month or £99-a-year subscription, with free samples for every exam. Explanations are grounded in UK guidance — NICE, CKS, SIGN and the electronic medicines compendium — which matters because the assessment expects UK management pathways.
For an exam where good practice material is scarce, an adaptive engine is especially valuable: it concentrates your limited practice on the domains where you are actually losing marks, rather than re-covering what you already know.
How the alternatives compare
The market is thin, which is the main point. A few dedicated resources exist — MYPANOTES offers a curated SBA library, flashcards and system notes mapped to the PARA content, with some free resources and tiered paid plans; Plabable for PA provides PARA-focused single-best-answer practice with per-question comments and study groups. US physician assistant banks such as Rosh Review or PANCE Prep carry large volumes and strong clinical content, but they are built for the US PANCE and reference US guidelines and drug names, so they are useful only for general clinical breadth and need every management answer checked against UK guidance. Clinical textbooks such as the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine, and the Oxford Assess and Progress self-assessment series, round out the reading.
The honest summary: dedicated UK PA Q-banks are few and mostly static, and the US banks are not UK-aligned. iatroX's contribution is an adaptive, UK-grounded PA bank at no cost — one of the very few adaptive options PA candidates have.
For the OSCE
No question bank prepares you for the 14-station OSCE, which tests history-taking, examination, communication and procedural skills. Pair the knowledge bank with structured station practice — Geeky Medics' large OSCE library is the strongest resource for that component — and rehearse with peers under timed conditions. The knowledge bank builds the recall and reasoning; the station practice builds the performance, and the two are not interchangeable. It is worth planning the OSCE logistics early, since the stations are held in person and the knowledge assessment is online; candidates who leave station rehearsal until after the written paper often underestimate how different the two skills are, and how much standalone practice the OSCE needs.
A domain-by-domain plan
A workable structure is to spend a week or two at the outset obtaining the current blueprint and running an adaptive baseline across all clinical domains to find your three weakest. Then cover the domains systematically — broadly a domain a week, weighted to match the blueprint — doing 30 to 40 adaptive questions a day, debriefing every miss through the Socratic tutor, and supplementing weak areas with textbook reading. Keep separate, deliberate OSCE station practice running alongside throughout. Closer to the exam, sit timed full-length blocks that mix domains to rebuild stamina and surface anything that has slipped. Because the blueprint defines how many questions come from each domain, weighting your effort to match it is the single most useful thing you can do with limited time. The thin resource market makes this discipline more important, not less: with fewer banks to fall back on, every question you practise needs to count toward a domain you are weak in, which is precisely what adaptive sequencing delivers rather than a fixed list you work through once.
A few common questions
Is iatroX's PARA bank really free? Yes — the PA bank is one of iatroX's free core banks, with no subscription required.
Is it UK-aligned? Yes — explanations are grounded in UK guidance, unlike US PANCE banks, which reference US pathways.
Does it cover the OSCE? No — it supports the knowledge assessment; pair it with dedicated OSCE station practice.
What about US PA banks? Useful for general clinical breadth only; verify every management answer against UK guidance before relying on it.
Start the free PARA bank on iatroX →
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