This is for GPs, GP trainees and other doctors in women's health who already hold a PassMedicine subscription and want to know what its DRCOG analytics can and cannot tell them. PassMedicine covers the written single-best-answer paper well. The principal limitation is straightforward: the dashboard reports practice behaviour — accuracy on a self-selected, often revisited pool — not readiness on the unseen, timed, mixed paper you will actually sit. Read it as behaviour, and you will study the wrong things.
What PassMedicine offers for DRCOG right now
The box below reflects PassMedicine's public DRCOG product, last checked 19 July 2026. Figures are vendor-reported; confirm the live numbers on the product page before you rely on them.
| Item | Vendor-reported position (19 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Question volume | "Over 1,000" single-best-answer questions mapped to DRCOG |
| Components covered | All seven RCOG DRCOG modules; SBA format only |
| Study modes | Revision mode and test mode; you can build timed tests and mock exams |
| Analytics | A histogram comparing your score against other candidates, updated daily; per-question teaching notes; flagging and personal notes |
| Adaptive/AI engine | None advertised — there is no documented proprietary algorithm that reorders difficulty for you |
| Price | Approximately £20 for two months, £30 for four months |
The important honest point sits in the last two rows. PassMedicine gives you the raw materials to steer your own revision — topic filters, an incorrect-question pool, a cohort histogram — but the public product does not claim an adaptive difficulty engine or a single "predicted DRCOG score". In practice, you are the adaptive layer, not the software. That changes how every number on the screen should be read.
The exam you are actually being measured against
The DRCOG is one computer-based paper of 120 single-best-answer questions over three hours. Each question is worth two marks, for a total of 240, and the current format is SBA-only — there are no extended-matching questions. The pass mark is set by a modified Angoff method by a panel of GPs and consultants, so it moves between sittings and there is no fixed quota. The RCOG syllabus spans seven modules: sexual and reproductive health, subfertility, early pregnancy, the pregnant woman, the peripartum woman and neonate, and urgent and non-urgent gynaecology. RCOG does not publish a fixed per-module question count, so treat the blueprint as "all seven modules can appear", not as a percentage table you can game. Any per-domain weighting you see in a third-party product is that vendor's inference, not an official quota.
Define every metric before you trust it
A dashboard number only means something once you know what it counts. Here is how to read each one for DRCOG.
| Metric | What it looks like it shows | What it actually measures |
|---|---|---|
| First-attempt accuracy | Your "true" knowledge | Accuracy the first time you meet an item — the closest proxy to readiness, but only if the sample is broad and unseen |
| Repeat accuracy | Improvement | Recognition of a question you have already seen and its explanation; inflates fast and means little |
| Cohort percentile (histogram) | How ready you are | Where you sit against other users who chose to answer — a self-selected, motivated comparison group, not the exam cohort |
| "Predicted score" | Your likely mark | Not published by PassMedicine; any figure you infer from percentage is not a calibrated prediction — treat it as noise |
| Coverage | How much you have done | Attempted versus total items; says nothing about whether the seven modules are evenly attempted |
| Difficulty | Item hardness | The proportion of other candidates who got it right — useful, but cohort-relative, not exam-relative |
| Time per item | Pacing | Only meaningful under timed, mixed conditions; in untimed revision mode it is meaningless |
The single most useful number is first-attempt accuracy on a broad, unseen sample. Almost every other headline figure can rise while your true readiness stays flat.
Why the feed over-samples your weaknesses
When you use topic filters and drill your incorrect questions — the sensible way to revise — you deliberately concentrate practice on weak areas. That is good studying, but it corrupts the home-screen average in two directions. Early on, heavy drilling of hard topics depresses your percentage below your true standing; later, repeated exposure to the same explanations lifts it above your true standing. Because the pool you are answering is not a representative DRCOG paper, the raw percentage is not comparable with a mixed, unseen block. The fix is never to compare a filtered-practice percentage with a mock percentage as if they were the same currency. They are not.
Audit your attempted distribution against the blueprint
Before you trust any average, spend ten minutes auditing where your attempts have actually gone. Export or read off your attempted counts per topic and lay them against the seven modules. A candidate who has answered 700 questions but concentrated them in antenatal care and contraception can carry a healthy overall percentage while having barely touched subfertility, neonatal examination or emergency gynaecology. The dashboard average hides this; a simple coverage matrix exposes it. If PassMedicine's tags do not map cleanly onto the seven RCOG modules, map them yourself once — it is the single highest-value analytics task you will do. Completion is not coverage, and our blueprint-coverage matrix guide walks through building one.
What a credible readiness signal requires
A number only counts as a readiness signal if it was produced under exam-like conditions. For DRCOG that means five things at once: the items are unseen (not previously attempted), the block is timed at roughly 90 seconds per item, the questions are mixed across all seven modules rather than topic-filtered, you answer with no assistance (no teaching notes, no reference open), and the sample is large enough — a single 20-item block is noise; 100-plus unseen, mixed items begins to mean something. PassMedicine's test mode can approximate this if you deliberately switch off filters and assistance. If any one condition is missing, you are reading practice data, not readiness.
Override rules: force what the feed will not
Because there is no algorithm forcing breadth, you must impose it. Set standing rules to surface the low-volume material that a weakness-drilling loop tends to starve:
- Force image and data interpretation (CTG traces, ultrasound findings) into every week — these are easy to avoid and heavily represented in real stems.
- Force contraception eligibility and safe prescribing in pregnancy and lactation, using UKMEC-style reasoning and the SmPC/eMC for medicines detail rather than memory.
- Force legal and ethical items — consent, Fraser competence, termination-of-pregnancy law, safeguarding — which rarely surface from a purely clinical drill.
- Force neonatal examination and the peripartum module, commonly under-attempted by GP candidates.
- Force emergency gynaecology (ectopic, ovarian torsion, sepsis) at least weekly.
Worked dashboard example: numbers into quotas
Suppose your dashboard reads: overall 74%, first-attempt 61%, 640 of 1,000 attempted, and topic attempts clustered as antenatal 210, contraception 150, gynaecology-non-urgent 120, early pregnancy 90, but subfertility 25, peripartum/neonate 30 and emergency gynaecology 15. Do not convert 74% into a pass prediction — it is not one. Instead, read the gaps: three modules are under-attempted, and first-attempt accuracy (61%) sits well below the revisited average (74%), which tells you the 74% is recognition-inflated. Next week's quota writes itself: 40 subfertility, 40 peripartum/neonatal, 40 emergency gynaecology, all first-attempt, plus one 60-item mixed timed block for a clean readiness read. The dashboard did not predict anything; it pointed you at what to do.
A seven-day pattern: one job each for two banks
Use PassMedicine for one defined job — first-pass learning with its teaching notes and consolidation of weak modules — and use a second, unseen bank for transfer measurement, so you are never grading yourself on questions you have already seen. This is the two-Q-bank rule, and it works without any claim about proprietary algorithms.
- Days 1–2: PassMedicine, revision mode, two under-attempted modules; read every teaching note.
- Day 3: Convert each error into a one-line rule; no new questions.
- Day 4: iatroX, a fresh timed DRCOG block on the same modules — unseen transfer, not a replay.
- Day 5: PassMedicine, images and emergency gynaecology, forced.
- Day 6: iatroX, a 60-item mixed timed block; record first-attempt accuracy only.
- Day 7: Audit coverage against the seven modules; set next week's quotas.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
Continue with PassMedicine as your primary bank if first-attempt accuracy is rising on unseen blocks and your teaching-note learning is still finding new gaps. Supplement with an unseen second bank the moment your revisited percentage climbs while first-attempt accuracy stalls — that gap is recognition, and you need fresh items to measure through it. Switch primary bank only if a measurable coverage gap (a whole module barely represented) persists despite forcing it. Stop a resource when it has been fully seen and is now testing memory of itself rather than knowledge — sunk cost is not a reason to keep drilling recognised items.
Bottom line
PassMedicine is a strong, well-explained DRCOG bank, and its cohort histogram is genuinely useful as a rough locator. But its headline average is a practice statistic, not a readiness verdict, and it does not adapt for you. Read first-attempt accuracy on unseen, timed, mixed blocks; audit your attempts against all seven modules; and force the low-volume material the drill will otherwise starve. Do that, and the analytics become a planning tool rather than a comfort blanket.
Frequently asked questions
Is PassMedicine enough for DRCOG on its own? For many candidates it can be a sufficient primary bank, because it covers all seven modules with explanatory teaching notes and lets you build timed tests. The caveat is that revising and measuring in the same bank blurs recognition with knowledge; a well-prepared candidate uses PassMedicine to learn and a separate unseen source to confirm readiness. On its own it is enough to learn from, but not always enough to trust your own score.
Which DRCOG component does PassMedicine not reproduce well? DRCOG is a single SBA paper, so PassMedicine reproduces the format closely. Where a bank is weaker is in image and data interpretation under time pressure, and in the legal, ethical and safeguarding items that a clinically focused drill tends to under-surface. These are exam-relevant and easy to avoid, so they need forcing rather than waiting for the feed to raise them.
How many PassMedicine questions should I complete per day for DRCOG? There is no vendor-published target, and volume is the wrong metric. A sustainable pattern for a working GP trainee is 30 to 50 questions daily, but weighted toward first-attempt items in under-covered modules rather than easy repeats. Quality of coverage across the seven modules matters far more than a daily count, and 40 well-chosen questions beat 100 recycled ones.
When should I stop using PassMedicine and move to mixed mocks? Move to predominantly mixed, timed, unseen blocks once your topic coverage is even across all seven modules and your first-attempt accuracy has stabilised. If your revisited percentage is high but first-attempt accuracy on fresh items is still volatile, you are not ready to stop learning — but you are ready to add mixed mocks to measure through the recognition inflation.
How should I combine PassMedicine with iatroX without duplicating practice? Assign each bank one job. Use PassMedicine to learn — teaching notes, weak-module drilling, error rules — and use a fresh iatroX DRCOG block only for unseen, timed measurement, so you never grade yourself on an item you have already seen. Keeping the learning bank and the measurement bank separate is what preserves the honesty of your readiness signal.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 19 July 2026; vendor figures (question counts, prices, features) are vendor-reported on that date and may change — verify the current numbers on the product page before relying on them. Disclosure: iatroX operates a DRCOG question bank that competes with PassMedicine; this article confines iatroX's role to unseen transfer measurement, a job PassMedicine's dashboard does not claim to perform. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: RCOG, DRCOG format and pass mark and DRCOG syllabus; PassMedicine DRCOG; iatroX, Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score and the comparison hub.