This is a calibration workflow for DRCOG candidates — GPs and doctors in women's health — who use a commercial question bank but want to know whether it is pitched at the real exam. The method is simple: treat RCOG's own material as the gold standard, extract the signals that define the paper, compare your commercial bank against them, and convert the differences into quotas and practice conditions. The principal limitation to respect throughout is that official material is finite, so its value is calibration, not volume — you sit it once, unseen, and never let it become a rehearsed favourite.
Current-state box (RCOG-reported, 20 July 2026)
Based on the RCOG DRCOG pages as checked on 20 July 2026: the college's principal official preparation resource is the DRCOG Revision Resource, an online single-best-answer question bank of 140 SBAs covering all seven syllabus modules, priced at £64.80 with six months' access (RCOG-reported figures — verify on rcog.org.uk / elearning.rcog.org.uk before purchase). Its questions are authored and reviewed by clinicians who have served on the DRCOG subcommittee or work as DRCOG course faculty, which is what makes it the calibration benchmark. Alongside it, the free official material is the DRCOG syllabus and the exam regulations and candidate guidance. There is no large free specimen paper, so the paid official bank plus the published syllabus are the closest calibration anchors available.
Exam anchor
The DRCOG is one computer-based paper of 120 single-best-answer questions in three hours, each worth two marks (240 total), pass mark set by modified Angoff, SBA-only with no OSCE component (verified against rcog.org.uk, 20 July 2026). The syllabus has seven modules: fertility regulation and sexual health; subfertility; early pregnancy; pregnancy; peripartum and neonatal care; emergency gynaecology; and non-urgent gynaecology, at competent-UK-GP level. These are the fixed reference points against which any commercial bank is judged.
What is genuinely official — and what only looks it
Separate three tiers before you calibrate. Official material is produced or quality-assured by RCOG: the syllabus, the exam regulations and candidate guidance, and the DRCOG Revision Resource authored by the college's own faculty. Endorsed or affiliated preparation may carry a course-faculty association but is still commercial. Independent commercial banks are everything else. Only the first tier defines the standard; the others are candidates to be audited against it. Being clear about which tier a resource sits in stops you calibrating your bank against another unofficial bank and mistaking agreement for accuracy.
Extract the signals from the official material
When you sit or read the official material, record its measurable properties rather than just its answers. Note stem length and style — how much clinical context a typical DRCOG SBA carries; option construction — five plausible options, single best answer, the kind of distractors used; cognitive level — how far items test application of guidance to a GP scenario versus recall; image and data use — where and how ultrasound, CTG, growth or investigation data appear; timing — the pace implied by 120 questions in three hours; negative marking — none, so no penalty for reasoned guesses; and domain emphasis — how the seven modules are represented, and in particular the primary-care women's-health tilt. These seven signals are your calibration fingerprint.
Build a side-by-side matrix
Without copying any item text, tabulate the fingerprint against your commercial bank:
| Signal | RCOG official material | My commercial bank | Discrepancy? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stem length / context | |||
| Option construction (5-option SBA) | |||
| Cognitive level (apply vs recall) | |||
| Image/data use | |||
| Implied pace | |||
| Negative marking (none) | |||
| Module emphasis / GP tilt |
Fill the middle columns from your own reading and the official material from the signals above. The final column is where the diagnosis lives.
Use discrepancies diagnostically
Each mismatch tells you something actionable. If your bank's stems are shorter and more factual than the official items, it is training recall while the exam tests applied judgement — add reasoning-level practice. If your bank is harder or more specialist, it may be denting your confidence without improving your GP-level readiness — recalibrate your target. If it is narrower, skewing to obstetrics over primary-care gynaecology, its module emphasis is off — top up the neglected modules. If it uses little imaging where the official items use more, add data-interpretation practice. The aim is not to declare the bank "good" or "bad" but to specify exactly how it differs, so you can compensate.
Preserve the calibration value of official material
The official 140-item bank is a finite, high-value asset, and its worth collapses if you grind it until you recognise every item. Sit it unseen, timed and essentially once — as close to exam conditions as you can — so it gives you a clean read on where you stand against the college's own standard. Do not use it as daily practice fodder; that is what commercial and iatroX volume is for. If you re-use it at all, do so only to confirm a specific corrected weakness, knowing recognition now inflates the result. Calibration once beats rehearsal many times.
Translate findings into quotas and conditions
Convert the audit into a plan. Suppose your matrix shows your commercial bank is recall-tilted, light on imaging, and thin on contraception and menopause. Your quotas for the remaining weeks then read: a fixed daily volume of applied-reasoning SBAs; a set number of image/data items per week; and a deliberate over-weight on the two thin modules until their unseen accuracy reaches target. Your conditions read: at least one full 120-question timed mock per week to rehearse three-hour pace, and unseen blocks — not re-runs — for all measurement. The official material set the standard; the quotas make your commercial and iatroX practice meet it.
Worked example: a seven-day plan for GPs in women's health
Using RCOG official resources for one defined job — calibration — and iatroX for adaptive transfer practice, with no proprietary-algorithm claims. Monday: sit a timed, unseen block of the official DRCOG Revision Resource and record the seven signals plus your per-module accuracy. Tuesday: build the side-by-side matrix against your commercial bank and write your quotas. Wednesday to Friday: work the two weakest modules the audit exposed, using commercial questions to learn and iatroX unseen blocks to measure transfer, reviewing misses the same day against NICE/RCOG guidance. Saturday: a full-length 120-question timed mock. Sunday: review only the mock's misses and high-confidence errors. The official material anchors the standard early in the week; the rest of the week meets it.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue with your commercial bank if the matrix shows it is well-aligned to the official fingerprint and closing your gaps.
- Supplement with targeted reasoning or imaging practice, and with iatroX unseen blocks for measurement, where the matrix shows a specific shortfall.
- Switch primary bank only if the audit reveals a systematic mismatch — wrong cognitive level or badly skewed modules — that top-ups cannot fix.
- Stop re-using the official material once it has done its calibration job; further rehearsal of it measures memory, not readiness.
The bottom line: RCOG official resources are the DRCOG calibration gold standard precisely because they are authored to the exam's own specification, but they are finite. Use them once, unseen and timed, to fingerprint the paper; audit your commercial bank against that fingerprint; and let commercial and iatroX volume supply the unseen breadth the official set cannot.
Three calibration mistakes to avoid
The first is calibrating your bank against another unofficial bank. If two commercial products agree, that tells you they resemble each other, not that either resembles the exam; only RCOG's own material can anchor the standard, so the official resource must be one side of every comparison. The second is burning the official material as practice volume. Because it is finite and authoritative, its worth lies in a single clean, unseen sitting; grind it into familiarity and you convert your one honest benchmark into a rehearsed set that flatters you on exam day. Ration it deliberately, and let commercial and iatroX questions carry the daily load. The third is auditing once and never revisiting. Calibration is not a one-off gate — as you strengthen weak modules, re-run the matrix's logic on your progress, checking that the gaps the fingerprint exposed are genuinely closing on unseen items rather than just feeling better. Avoiding these three keeps the official material doing the one job nothing else can: telling you, honestly and unrehearsed, how your preparation measures against the college's own standard rather than against a competitor's guess at it.
Frequently asked questions
Is RCOG Official Resources enough for DRCOG on its own? The official DRCOG Revision Resource is authoritative but small — 140 SBAs (RCOG-reported, 20 July 2026) — so it is enough to calibrate against, not enough to build broad unseen coverage on its own. Used alone, you would exhaust and start recognising it long before exam day, at which point it stops measuring anything. Treat it as the standard you audit against, and supply volume from a commercial bank and iatroX.
Which DRCOG component does RCOG Official Resources not reproduce well? DRCOG is a single SBA paper, so there is no OSCE to reproduce; the practical limit of the official resource is breadth and repetition, not a missing component. Its finite item count means it cannot give you the sustained, varied, unseen practice a three-hour paper demands. That volume role is exactly what your commercial bank and iatroX fill, while the official set holds the calibration line.
How many RCOG Official Resources questions should I complete per day for DRCOG? Deliberately few, and ideally in one clean sitting rather than daily. Because the official bank's value is calibration, sit its 140 items as one or two timed, unseen blocks to benchmark yourself, rather than rationing them across weeks until they become familiar. Your daily question volume should come from commercial and iatroX unseen practice, with the official set reserved as the standard.
When should I stop using RCOG Official Resources and move to mixed mocks? Move to full-length mixed mocks as soon as you have used the official material to fingerprint the exam and set your quotas — usually within the first week of focused revision. The official set is a calibration checkpoint, not an ongoing drill, so once it has told you where you stand, your rehearsal for three-hour pace should come from full 120-question mocks on unseen items.
How should I combine RCOG Official Resources with iatroX without duplicating practice? Keep their roles separate: RCOG official material is the calibration benchmark you sit once, unseen and timed; iatroX supplies the ongoing unseen volume and spaced re-tests that meet the standard the benchmark set. Because you are not re-answering official items in iatroX, there is no duplication — the official resource defines the target, and iatroX independently measures your progress toward it on fresh questions.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 20 July 2026. Figures for the official DRCOG Revision Resource are RCOG-reported from rcog.org.uk / elearning.rcog.org.uk as at that date and may change — verify the current question count, price and access, and the exam format, on rcog.org.uk before relying on them. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing DRCOG question bank; here it is confined to the unseen-volume and spaced-measurement role that the finite official material cannot fill, and it is not positioned as a substitute for RCOG's own resources. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com. References: RCOG DRCOG exam, syllabus and resources (rcog.org.uk); RCOG official DRCOG Revision Resource (elearning.rcog.org.uk); iatroX, "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score" (https://www.iatrox.com/blog/qbank-percentage-not-your-exam-score); iatroX DRCOG guide (https://www.iatrox.com/blog/drcog-exam-2026-complete-guide-revision-resources-iatrox-adaptive-qbank).