This workflow is for DFSRH candidates in the last six to eight weeks before the eKA who want the official FSRH/CoSRH material to do the one job it is uniquely good at: telling you, under honest conditions, where you actually stand. It addresses the knowledge component only — the eKA — not the Course of Study or the supervised clinical experience. The principal limitation to state up front is that the official material is finite and partly designed to teach rather than to test, so once you have worked through it you cannot re-use it as a clean measurement; you calibrate on it once, then get your unseen volume elsewhere.
Current-state box (last checked 21 July 2026)
The "official resources" for DFSRH are not a large commercial question bank. They are, principally, the e-SRH e-learning programme (produced by elearning for Healthcare with the College), the curriculum, syllabus and assessment guidance on cosrh.org, current FSRH Clinical Effectiveness Unit (CEU) guidance, and UKMEC 2025. Any sample or demonstration questions are limited in number.
- Question count: the official material is not a high-volume bank; verify the current number of official sample or self-assessment items on cosrh.org and e-LfH — do not expect bank-scale volume.
- Access period and price: e-SRH access and any diploma/eKA fees are set by the College and e-LfH; verify current fees and access terms on cosrh.org and e-lfh.org.uk. Do not rely on a price quoted here.
- AI/adaptive features: none. The official material is e-learning plus guidance; there is no adaptive engine.
- Supported components: the official material maps to the whole DCSRH pathway — e-learning for the knowledge, and separate arrangements for the Course of Study and clinical experience. For the eKA specifically, it is your calibration and content gold-standard, not your volume source.
Naming note: the Faculty became the College of Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare (CoSRH) in August 2025 (fsrh.org redirects to cosrh.org), and DFSRH is increasingly written DCSRH; confirm the current assessment name and format for your diet on cosrh.org.
Exam anchor
The eKA is the knowledge gate: on the standing specification, 100 single-best-answer questions, five options each, up to two hours, computer-based, no negative marking, with an immediate pass/fail result and no score breakdown. That "no breakdown" is the reason this protocol exists — the exam will not diagnose you, so the official material has to. Distinguish official requirements from third-party claims: the College defines the curriculum, the eKA, the e-learning, the Course of Study and the clinical experience; a revision vendor's coverage claims are useful but are not the specification. When they disagree, cosrh.org wins.
Inventory and label every official item
Before you use the official material, list it and label each item by how usable it still is for measurement:
- Unseen — official sample or self-assessment items you have never opened. These are precious; ration them.
- Attempted once — items you have done but not memorised. Useful for review, spent for measurement.
- Contaminated by review — anything you have read the answer and rationale for. Excellent for learning, useless as a mock.
The point of the inventory is to protect a small pool of genuinely unseen official items for your one calibration sitting, and to stop you accidentally "practising" on questions whose answers you already know.
Choose the calibration date
Sit your calibration late enough that it means something and early enough that you can still act on it. For most candidates that is four to six weeks before the eKA. Earlier and you are measuring a version of yourself that no longer exists by exam day; later and you learn about a weak domain with no time to fix it. Put the date in the calendar now, and protect the unseen official pool until then.
Reproduce exam conditions exactly
The calibration only works if it is honest. Reproduce the eKA as closely as the official material allows: a single timed block, roughly one minute and a little per item, no pausing, no looking things up mid-block, no interruptions, and the same computer-based response format. If you allow yourself references or breaks, you are measuring a supported performance you will not have on the day, and the calibration will over-reassure you.
Code every error by domain, process and format
When the block is done, do not simply read the answers. Code each error three ways:
- Domain — which curriculum area (e.g. emergency contraception, UKMEC application, safeguarding).
- Cognitive process — was it a knowledge gap, a misread stem, a reasoning slip, or a recency error (right in 2019, wrong under UKMEC 2025)?
- Format — did the single-best-answer structure catch you, or the timing?
Coding by cause, not merely by subject, is what turns a score into a study plan. Two wrong emergency-contraception questions with different causes need two different fixes.
Map each error to fresh, unseen practice
Now convert the coded errors into action, and keep the official questions out of your daily loop. For each error cluster, do targeted learning against the source (e-SRH, CEU guidance, UKMEC 2025, SmPC via the eMC), then rehearse the principle on fresh questions you have not seen — a transfer item that tests the same rule in a new stem. This is where a third-party unseen bank earns its place: iatroX is designed to supply that unseen transfer volume without contaminating the finite official pool. Describe the mechanism honestly — spaced retrieval of your weak domains — and make no claim about any proprietary algorithm.
Repeat only with genuinely unseen material
If you calibrate again, do it only with genuinely unseen official material or a newly released official sample. Re-sitting questions whose answers you now know measures your memory of that sitting, not your readiness. When you have no fresh official material left, switch to transfer questions in an unseen bank for your ongoing measurement, and keep the official material as the reference standard it is.
Worked example: a seven-day plan
Consider a practice nurse preparing for the eKA, whose one defined job for the official material this week is calibration and error-coding, with iatroX supplying adaptive transfer practice for the gaps it reveals.
- Day 1: Sit the reserved unseen official items under strict exam conditions. Mark, but do not yet read rationales.
- Day 2: Code every error by domain, process and format. Cluster them. Today the clusters are: UKMEC 2025 recency (four items) and emergency-contraception timing (three items).
- Day 3: Learn the UKMEC 2025 cluster against the current source; then a short, timed iatroX block of unseen items on the same categories to test transfer.
- Day 4: Learn the emergency-contraception cluster against CEU guidance and the relevant SmPC; timed iatroX transfer block.
- Day 5: Mixed timed iatroX block across both weak domains plus two strong ones, to confirm the fixes held under mixed conditions and to check pace.
- Day 6: Review only the new misses; re-test the two stubborn items cold.
- Day 7: Rest or a light retention check. Do not re-sit the official items — they are spent.
The official material did the diagnosis once; the unseen bank did the repetition. No official question entered daily practice, so the calibration stays clean for any later use.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue with the official material if you still have unseen official items reserved and have not yet calibrated — finish that job first.
- Supplement with an unseen third-party bank the moment you need volume or spaced repetition the finite official set cannot provide. This is the normal end state.
- Switch your measurement to unseen transfer questions once the official pool is spent; keep the official material as reference only.
- Stop when coverage is complete, unseen accuracy is stable at pace, and the official calibration and your third-party performance agree — not when you have simply read everything once.
Frequently asked questions
Is FSRH Official Resources enough for DFSRH on its own? For the knowledge that the eKA tests, the official material — e-SRH e-learning, CEU guidance and UKMEC 2025 — is the authoritative content source, so in a coverage sense it can teach you everything the exam expects. What it does not give you is high-volume, repeatable, unseen practice, because the official sample material is finite and, once reviewed, no longer measures you. Most candidates therefore treat the official resources as the calibration and content gold-standard and add a bank for volume; verify the current amount of official practice material on cosrh.org.
Which DFSRH component does FSRH Official Resources not reproduce well? It does not reproduce the experience of a large, unseen, timed mixed bank, and it is not designed to — the e-learning is built to teach, not to simulate the eKA at volume. It also, by definition, does not stand in for the supervised clinical experience or the Course of Study, which are separate requirements assessed by your trainer rather than by any online material. Use the official resources for content and calibration, and get your unseen measurement and your clinical sign-off from the appropriate places.
How many FSRH Official Resources questions should I complete per day for DFSRH? Because the official practice material is finite rather than a daily-grind bank, the right number is usually zero on most days: you reserve the unseen official items for a single calibration sitting rather than drip-feeding them. On the days around your calibration you sit the reserved set once, in full, under exam conditions. For daily question volume, turn to a third-party bank, and verify on cosrh.org how much official self-assessment material actually exists before you plan around it.
When should I stop using FSRH Official Resources and move to mixed mocks? Move to mixed, timed blocks as soon as you have completed your calibration sitting and coded its errors — that is the signal that the official material has done its diagnostic job. From that point, the official resources revert to being your reference source for learning the specific gaps, while your ongoing measurement happens on unseen mixed blocks. Returning to already-reviewed official questions for "practice" measures memory, not readiness, so do not treat that as a mock.
How should I combine FSRH Official Resources with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each a single, non-overlapping job: the official material calibrates and teaches, and iatroX supplies the unseen transfer practice for the domains the calibration flags. Never load official questions into your daily bank routine, and never treat a reviewed official item as measurement — that is the duplication that destroys calibration. If you keep the official pool clean for one honest sitting and let iatroX handle the repetition, the two resources complement rather than shadow each other. This is the two-Q-bank rule applied to official-plus-third-party material.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. Because the Faculty rebranded to the College of Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare (CoSRH) in August 2025 (fsrh.org redirects to cosrh.org) and DFSRH is being redesignated DCSRH, verify the current assessment name, format, fees and access terms on cosrh.org and e-lfh.org.uk before relying on any figure here. Vendor- and body-reported details are labelled and dated 21 July 2026; counts, fees and access periods change.
Disclosure: iatroX operates a UK question bank that competes with third-party revision products. Its role here is confined to what the official resources do not claim to provide — unseen, timed transfer questions for measuring the eKA knowledge layer. iatroX does not deliver the e-SRH e-learning, the Course of Study or the clinical experience. Corrections via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: College of Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare, cosrh.org (Education and Training, eKA, curriculum); UKMEC 2025 (CoSRH); FSRH Clinical Effectiveness Unit guidance; Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (e-SRH), e-lfh.org.uk; medicines detail via SmPC on the eMC. Internal: the DFSRH content-gap checklist; Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score; the iatroX DFSRH question bank and comparison hub.