This is for international medical graduates using BMJ OnExamination for PLAB 1 who want a concrete weekly workflow rather than another product ranking. It addresses the written PLAB 1 paper, and its principal limitation shapes the whole method: the "adaptive" feel of BMJ OnExamination is a user-selected revision plan and difficulty setting, not a machine-learning engine. Left on autopilot it steers you toward comfortable, high-volume topics and away from the low-volume MLA domains — ethics and law, prescribing safety, safeguarding, statistics and data interpretation — that quietly decide borderline passes.
What BMJ OnExamination offers for PLAB 1 right now
| Item | Detail (vendor-reported, last checked 19 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Publisher | BMJ Publishing Group. |
| Bank | PLAB (PLAB 1) — vendor-reported 1,250+ questions reviewed to reflect current GMC standards; verify the live count on the product page. |
| "Adaptivity" | User-selected difficulty and a structured revision plan, plus recap of challenging questions. There is no ML adaptive feed. |
| Mocks | Editorially curated mock exams and recent-theme tests (vendor-reported). |
| Social features | Daily leaderboard and group ten-question games (vendor-reported). |
| Price | Vendor-reported promotional pricing observed on 19 July 2026 (roughly £4.99 for one month up to around £19.99 for twelve); verify current pricing and access on the product page. |
| Components | PLAB 1 written SBA only; PLAB 2, the OSCE, is not covered. |
Used deliberately, the revision plan gives helpful structure and the mocks are useful. The four operating principles of this workflow are simple: follow the plan for structure, override it for breadth, ignore the leaderboard, and practise at exam difficulty.
The exam you are actually preparing for
PLAB 1 is 180 single-best-answer questions in three hours — about one minute per item — pitched at the level of a doctor entering the second Foundation year, and aligned to the GMC MLA content map (updated January 2026, applying from September 2026). The map spans three dimensions: areas of clinical practice, presentations and conditions. Because it is broad and the paper samples widely, breadth of coverage matters more than depth in any one favourite topic. Confirm the current format and official sample questions on the GMC website, and treat third-party topic lists as interpretations of the GMC map rather than the map itself.
Baseline week: measure before you personalise
Before the revision plan or difficulty settings shape your feed, establish a baseline on unseen questions. Run two or three fresh, timed, mixed blocks in iatroX at about one minute per item, unassisted, sampling across the MLA areas rather than your strong topics. Record accuracy per area, not a single number. As the Q-bank percentage article explains, a bank average over questions you have already seen measures recall, not readiness — so the baseline must be unseen to mean anything. Expect your low-volume areas to sit below your clinical-medicine average.
First pass: follow the plan, but set domain floors
Follow BMJ OnExamination's revision plan for daily structure — it is a reasonable scaffold. But layer domain floors on top so the plan and your own preferences cannot hide an unattempted area behind a rising score. Set a minimum number of first-attempt questions per MLA area before the first pass counts, and deliberately protect the areas a self-selected feed under-samples:
| Area type | First-pass priority | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Core clinical medicine and surgery | Follow the plan | High-volume; already well served |
| Clinical ethics and law | Forced floor | Reliably under-sampled; high consequence |
| Prescribing and medication safety | Forced floor | UK-referenced (SmPC/eMC); jurisdiction-sensitive |
| Safeguarding (children and adults) | Forced floor | Under-practised; predictable marks |
| Statistics and evidence-based practice | Forced floor | Learnable and reliably tested |
| Images, ECGs and data interpretation | Forced floor | Reward exposure, not memorisation |
Track attempted counts per area weekly and top up whichever floor lags. The floors are the whole defence against a broad blueprint being revised narrowly.
An error taxonomy that tells you what to do next
Sort every wrong answer into one of six types, because the type dictates the fix:
- Knowledge gap — you did not know it. Fix: a short UK-source read, then a fresh transfer question.
- Misread stem — you missed a discriminating detail. Fix: a stem-marking habit.
- Premature closure — you anchored and stopped. Fix: a forced differential before committing.
- Guideline / jurisdiction error — your answer was non-UK or out of date. Fix: correct against a current UK source and date it.
- Calculation error — a dose, rate or unit slip. Fix: drill the calculation type under time pressure.
- Time-pressure error — right answer, too slow. Fix: pacing practice.
For an IMG, the guideline/jurisdiction row deserves special attention: tag every instance where your instinct came from your home health system rather than UK practice. That single habit corrects the most common avoidable PLAB 1 error.
Review intervals: repeat, transfer, space or read
Decide the review action from the error type rather than re-doing every question: a new transfer question (ideally unseen) for knowledge gaps and premature closure; spaced review at three and ten days for newly learned facts; a short UK-source read for guideline and jurisdiction errors; and an immediate light repeat only for genuine misreads. This keeps seen-question exposure low, preserving unseen questions for honest measurement.
Ignore the leaderboard; practise at exam difficulty
Two settings can derail an otherwise good plan. The daily leaderboard rewards volume and speed, pulling you toward easy, fast questions and away from the hard, low-volume areas you most need — so treat it, at most, as a reason to show up daily, never as a measure of progress or a guide to which questions to do. Difficulty selection is the other: keep your default at standard, exam-representative difficulty. An easy setting inflates accuracy without changing readiness, and a percentage earned on easy questions will not survive contact with the real paper.
The mixed-block switch
Topic-filtered practice is right early, while you build coverage. Switch toward timed random mixed blocks once three criteria are met: every area floor is cleared; first-attempt accuracy is stable within a few points across most areas; and pacing sits comfortably near one minute per item. After that, most practice should be full, timed, mixed, standard-difficulty blocks, because interleaving is the actual skill PLAB 1 tests.
Exit criteria that mean something
You are ready to ease off new questions when you can evidence five things — none of which is bank completion: coverage across all MLA areas, including the low-volume ones; stable first-attempt performance across two or more fresh, timed, mixed blocks; pacing that holds near one minute per item across a full-length block; retention on delayed recall; and calibration against the GMC sample questions.
Worked example: seven days for an international graduate
A realistic week balancing content review with UK exam conventions, using BMJ OnExamination for one defined job and iatroX for unseen measurement — no proprietary-algorithm claims.
| Day | BMJ OnExamination (one job) | iatroX (unseen measurement) |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | Plan block + forced ethics/prescribing floor, standard difficulty | — |
| Tue | Review; tag UK-vs-home-jurisdiction corrections | 1 fresh 20-item mixed block, timed |
| Wed | Plan block + forced safeguarding/data-interpretation floor | — |
| Thu | Update per-area attempted counts; spaced recall | 1 fresh 20-item mixed block, timed |
| Fri | Curated mock, timed, standard difficulty | — |
| Sat | Review mock by area; force any lagging floor | — |
| Sun | Rest, or read UK guidance for two missed topics | Compare unseen accuracy vs baseline |
Roughly two-thirds of effort stays on BMJ OnExamination for learning and mocks, and one-third on iatroX for unseen measurement — an application of the two-Q-bank rule.
Three mistakes this workflow is designed to stop
First, letting the plan and your preferences narrow a broad blueprint — the domain floors force breadth into ethics, prescribing, safeguarding, statistics and data interpretation. Second, chasing the leaderboard, which rewards fast, easy volume and starves the areas that decide borderline passes. Third, practising on an easy difficulty and mistaking the resulting percentage for readiness — keep difficulty at standard and measure on unseen blocks, remembering a bank percentage is not an exam score. For the full coverage-matrix method, see the completion-is-not-coverage pillar.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue BMJ OnExamination where your area floors are being met and standard-difficulty accuracy is rising on fresh questions.
- Supplement with unseen measurement once the headline percentage stops moving you — learn here, measure elsewhere.
- Switch or add a bank only for a measurable coverage gap the current one under-samples, not for novelty or a nicer interface.
- Stop expanding when coverage is even across the MLA areas, unseen timed scores are stable, and remaining errors are careless rather than conceptual.
Bottom line
BMJ OnExamination is a solid PLAB 1 learning-and-mock engine, provided you run it deliberately: follow its revision plan for structure, override it with domain floors to protect the low-volume MLA areas, keep difficulty at standard, and ignore the leaderboard. Do that, correct relentlessly for UK jurisdiction, and reserve unseen questions for measurement — and a self-selected feed becomes a broad, honest preparation rather than a comfortable one.
Frequently asked questions
Is BMJ OnExamination enough for PLAB 1 on its own? For structured learning and mock practice it can carry most of a PLAB 1 revision plan, with a vendor-reported bank of 1,250+ questions and curated mocks. For readiness measurement it is not enough alone, because its revision plan and difficulty settings are self-selected and its headline numbers are lifted by recapping seen questions. Keep a separate source of fresh, unseen questions.
Which PLAB 1 component does BMJ OnExamination not reproduce well? It does not reproduce PLAB 2, the OSCE, at all. Within PLAB 1 it does not reproduce exam-standard difficulty unless you set it there, and if you follow the plan and leaderboard passively it under-reproduces the low-volume areas — ethics and law, prescribing safety, safeguarding, statistics and data interpretation — which is why this workflow forces those with domain floors.
How many BMJ OnExamination questions should I complete per day for PLAB 1? Around 30–50 first-attempt questions a day is sustainable, but the conditions matter more than the count: standard difficulty, at least as much review as answering, and volume weighted toward the areas your floors show are lagging. Doing many quick, easy questions to climb the leaderboard is the least productive way to spend the same time.
When should I stop using BMJ OnExamination and move to mixed mocks? Interleave mixed, timed mocks throughout rather than saving them for the end, and shift decisively toward full, timed, mixed, standard-difficulty mocks once every area floor is cleared, your accuracy is stable across areas, and your pacing holds near one minute per item. That transition, not finishing the bank, is the signal.
How should I combine BMJ OnExamination with iatroX without duplicating practice? Use BMJ OnExamination as your learning and mock engine and iatroX only for fresh, unseen measurement, so you never test yourself on questions you have already recapped. Learn and review on BMJ OnExamination, then run blueprint-sampled, timed, unassisted blocks in iatroX for an honest readiness number — the split the two-Q-bank rule describes.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 19 July 2026. Exam format reflects the published GMC PLAB 1 structure and the MLA content map (updated January 2026, applying from September 2026) at that date; verify the current format and official sample questions on the GMC website before relying on any detail. BMJ OnExamination question counts, prices, revision-plan, mock and leaderboard features are vendor-reported and should be confirmed on the product page, as promotional pricing and features change.
Disclosure: iatroX operates its own question bank and clinical-knowledge tools, so it competes with the resources discussed here. This is written as an exam-level method rather than a product pitch, and iatroX is positioned only for the job it suits — fresh, unseen questions for baseline and readiness measurement — not as a replacement for BMJ OnExamination's learning content and mocks, or for PLAB 2. Corrections are welcome through the feedback route on iatrox.com. Compare resources on the iatroX comparison hub.
References: General Medical Council — PLAB 1 format, the MLA content map and official sample questions (gmc-uk.org); BMJ OnExamination PLAB product page (onexamination.com); NICE, CKS, SmPC/eMC and NHS content for UK jurisdiction and guideline currency; iatroX, why your Q-bank percentage is not your exam score and the completion-is-not-coverage blueprint-matrix method.