This workflow is for internationally trained dentists enrolled in Prep Doctors' AFK programme who want to convert its live lectures, discussions and integrated question bank into active recall and unseen practice for the Assessment of Fundamental Knowledge. It addresses the written biomedical and applied clinical knowledge the AFK tests. Its principal limitation is structural: a large, live-teaching programme delivers many hours of input and an integrated bank you will eventually recognise, so without deliberate retrieval it can produce familiarity that feels like readiness but is not measured as such.
What Prep Doctors offers for NDEB AFK right now
The summary below was last checked on 20 July 2026 and is vendor-reported from ca.prepdoctors.com; confirm the current numbers and price on the product page, as cohorts and pricing change between diets.
| Item | What we could confirm (vendor-reported, 20 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Product type | A comprehensive AFK course with an integrated question bank and mentorship |
| Question count | "5,000+ AFK practice questions" |
| Lectures / discussion | ~51–57 live interactive lectures; up to ~80 hours of live discussions |
| Mock exams | 2 online mocks (online track) or up to 4 on-site mocks |
| Programme length | ~6-month programme; textbooks included |
| Price | ~C$6,900 (online) to ~C$7,250 (on-site), with an advertised upfront discount |
| Other claims | "Passing guarantee", "80%+ pass rate", "12,000+ doctors trained" — vendor-reported, not independently verified |
| AI / adaptive features | None advertised — verify |
| NDEB components covered | AFK only within the equivalency track; ACS, ACJ, OSCE and NDECC are separate |
Prep Doctors is one of the larger and more established AFK providers, and the integrated bank plus live teaching is a genuine strength for candidates who need structure. Note the marketing claims — the passing guarantee and the pass-rate and cohort figures — are vendor-reported; treat them as claims to verify, not as evidence, and read the guarantee's conditions carefully. A passing guarantee does not remove your need to measure readiness on unseen items.
The NDEB AFK exam anchor
The AFK is 200 single-answer MCQs in two parts, two hours per part (four hours total), delivered electronically at Prometric or in booklet form at select sites; a test-equated, re-scaled score of 75 or greater passes, and it is the first step of the Equivalency Process. It tests biomedical and applied clinical dental science. The NDEB publishes an AFK protocol, an orientation and a 100-question web-based self-assessment but no fine-grained topic weighting, so Prep Doctors' subject list (pharmacology, oral surgery, prosthodontics, endodontics, oral pathology, radiology and the rest) is a syllabus map, not an official quota. Anchor your calibration to the official self-assessment.
Step one: diagnose before each live session
Live lectures are engaging, which makes them easy to consume passively. Before a session, spend five minutes on a short diagnostic set for that topic from the integrated bank. Entering a lecture with two specific things you got wrong turns a broadcast into targeted learning and gives your attention somewhere to land. This is especially valuable in a programme with up to 80 hours of discussion, where the risk is drifting through hours of talk without encoding.
Step two: bounded segments, then recall before you check
Whether live or recorded, take the material in bounded segments and, at each break, close everything and write a concise free recall — the key facts, the mechanism, the one discrimination that mattered — before consulting your notes or the textbook. In a high-input programme this single habit is what separates candidates who can reproduce knowledge on the paper from those who merely recognised it in the room.
Step three: convert each objective into three prompts
Turn every learning objective into three testable prompts and bank them: one discrimination question of the type the AFK asks, one management rule stating the single decision the objective drives, and one "why not the alternative?" prompt naming the tempting wrong answer and why it fails. With 51–57 lectures, doing this per objective is what stops the course becoming a wall of passive notes. Trace any pharmacology detail to the SmPC/eMC so your medicines facts are verifiable rather than slide-deep.
Step four: test on a delay with fresh questions — do not replay the lecture
Re-watching a recorded lecture as revision is recognition and inflates confidence. Instead, test each topic with fresh questions 24–48 hours later, and again after a week or two. Use the integrated bank first, but once its items become familiar, bring in a genuinely unseen source so the question is new. The integrated bank is large, but "large" is not "infinite" — a diligent candidate working a six-month programme will start recognising items, and recognition is not readiness.
Step five: a weekly mixed block so course order is not a cue
Prep Doctors teaches in structured order, and that order becomes a silent cue. Once a week, build a mixed block interleaving every topic covered so far, timed at about a minute per item. Interleaving lowers your in-session score and raises the difficulty; that is precisely the discrimination the mixed, uncued AFK paper requires. Periodically chain two blocks to rehearse the two-part, four-hour structure.
Step six: exit on performance, not on completion or the guarantee
Neither "I attended every lecture" nor "the course guarantees a pass" is a readiness signal. The outcome that matters is objective performance on unseen, timed, mixed questions. A candidate who has completed the programme but never sat a timed block of fresh items does not know whether they are ready, guarantee or not. Your Q-bank percentage is a diagnostic, not a predicted score, and course completion is a weaker signal still.
A seven-day worked example
One week for an internationally trained dentist balancing content review with local Canadian exam conventions, using Prep Doctors for the taught-content and volume job and iatroX for unseen transfer measurement. It is a manual schedule; no proprietary-algorithm capability is claimed for either tool.
| Day | Prep Doctors job | iatroX / unseen job |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | Diagnostic set, then attend or watch the topic lecture; write recalls | — |
| Tue | Build three prompts per objective; drill the integrated bank on the topic | 15 fresh unseen items on the same principles |
| Wed | Live discussion; capture only new distinctions, not a transcript | — |
| Thu | Sit a Prep Doctors mock section, timed; error-code the misses | 15 unseen items on Thursday's weak areas |
| Fri | Targeted review of the two weakest domains only | — |
| Sat | Weekly mixed block interleaving all topics, timed | — |
| Sun | Rest the official NDEB self-assessment once, unseen | 20 unseen mixed items as a readiness read |
The official self-assessment is spent once and never re-sat; Prep Doctors supplies teaching and volume, iatroX supplies the fresh unseen check.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
| Signal you can measure | Action |
|---|---|
| Learning genuinely new content; recalls improving | Continue the programme |
| Knowledge solid but pace or mixed-block accuracy lagging | Supplement with unseen, timed practice |
| Recognising integrated-bank items before reading the stem | Switch daily testing to a fresh bank; keep the course bank for spaced review |
| Floors met, pace stable, unseen block holds up | Stop adding input; consolidate and rest |
Base every move on a measurable gap, not on the reassurance of a guarantee or the sunk cost of a large programme.
Bottom line
Prep Doctors is a strong option for the teaching-and-volume job, with live lectures, mentorship and a large integrated bank. It cannot, by itself, tell you whether you can reason through unseen items at pace, because its bank will become familiar and its guarantee is not a readiness measurement. Diagnose before you watch, recall before you check, convert objectives into prompts, test on a delay with fresh questions, and exit on unseen timed performance. That turns a big taught programme into measured readiness.
Frequently asked questions
Is Prep Doctors enough for NDEB AFK on its own? For the teaching-and-volume job it is a comprehensive, well-structured option, and many candidates use a single course as their spine. Whether it is "enough" depends on whether you convert its many input hours into active retrieval and whether its integrated bank gives you enough unseen volume at the end. Most candidates benefit from a fresh source for the final unseen practice. Verify the current question count, mock count and price on ca.prepdoctors.com, and read the passing-guarantee conditions, because a guarantee's terms matter more than its headline.
Which NDEB AFK component does Prep Doctors not reproduce well? The full, two-part, four-hour Prometric environment with mixed, uncued sequencing and equated ≥75 scoring. Course mocks and the integrated bank reproduce content and item style well, but once seen they measure memory, and structured teaching order does not train the interleaved discrimination the real paper demands. Reproduce exam-day conditions with fresh, timed, mixed blocks rather than relying on familiar mocks.
How many Prep Doctors questions should I complete per day for NDEB AFK? There is no official figure. A sustainable pattern is 40–60 questions a day from the integrated bank with full review of every miss, rising to timed mixed blocks near the exam. Prioritise disciplined review over raw volume, and hold back a pool of unseen items for timed assessment rather than exhausting the bank in the first pass, because an exhausted bank can only measure recognition.
When should I stop using Prep Doctors and move to mixed mocks? Shift the emphasis when you are learning little genuinely new, when integrated-bank items start feeling familiar, and when your coverage floors are met. At that point the teaching has delivered its value and further consumption mostly measures recognition. Move to timed, mixed, unseen blocks — using a fresh bank such as iatroX for the unseen items — and keep the official self-assessment for one final calibration sitting.
How should I combine Prep Doctors with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each a single job. Prep Doctors owns teaching, mentorship and its integrated bank; iatroX owns the fresh, unseen measurement of whether that content transfers. Do not re-answer a Prep Doctors item inside iatroX — that duplicates practice and rewards recognition. After a topic, answer a new iatroX item on the same principle. This applies the two-Q-bank rule: one resource teaches and supplies volume, the other measures on uncontaminated items, and they never overlap.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 20 July 2026. All Prep Doctors figures (question, lecture, mock and price counts, plus pass-rate and cohort claims) are vendor-reported from ca.prepdoctors.com on that date and should be re-verified on the product page, because cohorts, pricing and guarantee terms change; the exam facts are anchored to the NDEB AFK protocol, and dental medicines detail should be traced to the SmPC/eMC. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing question bank and clinical-knowledge platform; its role here is confined to the unseen-measurement and spaced-retrieval jobs Prep Doctors does not claim to provide, and no proprietary-algorithm capability is asserted. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: National Dental Examining Board of Canada — Assessment of Fundamental Knowledge (ndeb-bned.ca/equivalency-process/assessment-of-fundamental-knowledge/) and the AFK self-assessment (ndeb-bned.ca/quiz/); Prep Doctors AFK course pages (ca.prepdoctors.com); iatroX comparison hub, Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score and the two-Q-bank rule.