If you have searched for a "BMJ OnExamination SCE Infectious Diseases" bank, start with two findings that change the plan. First, the MRCP(UK) Specialty Certificate Examination in Infectious Diseases was withdrawn — its final sitting was in 2017. Second, BMJ OnExamination does not list an SCE Infectious Diseases product at all. UK infection certification now runs through the RCPath CICE under Combined Infection Training. This article audits what BMJ OnExamination actually covers, maps the live CICE blueprint, and shows how to use adaptive analytics without letting low-volume domains disappear.
What changed, and why the old search no longer works
The Federation's own page is explicit that "the final examination was held in 2017" for the Infectious Diseases SCE. Certification for UK infection trainees — whether their base specialty is Infectious Diseases, Medical Microbiology or Medical Virology — is now the Certificate of Combined Infection Training examination (CICE), which the Royal College of Pathologists also offers as the FRCPath Part 1 in Infection. So a candidate optimising a revision workflow "for the SCE Infectious Diseases" is aiming at an examination that no longer exists, using a product that was never built for it. The useful move is to repoint the effort at CICE and audit your coverage honestly.
Why does the search term persist at all? Because trainees, educational supervisors and older revision guides still refer to the "SCE Infectious Diseases", and because the change was handled as a training-pathway reform rather than a simple rename. The Federation directs candidates to transitional arrangements for UK trainees, trainers, educational supervisors and Heads of School rather than to a like-for-like replacement paper, so the old label lingers while the examination behind it has gone. Anyone tuning a bank "for the SCE ID" is really asking a more useful question: how do I certify infection knowledge now, and how do I revise for the paper that replaced it?
What BMJ OnExamination offers right now
| Item | What we found (vendor-reported, BMJ OnExamination, last checked 20 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| SCE products listed | Acute Medicine; Endocrinology & Diabetes; Geriatric Medicine; Respiratory Medicine; Neurology |
| SCE Infectious Diseases | Not offered — no Infectious Diseases product exists on onexamination.com |
| Closest relevant banks | MRCP Part 1 and MRCP Part 2 Written — membership-level general medicine that includes infection content |
| Personalisation | "High Impact Questions" ranked by tutors, "Your Daily Question", performance feedback and peer comparison; described as personalised rather than a published adaptive-difficulty algorithm |
| Access / price example | MRCP Part 1 shown at about £53.99 for one month; access tiers roughly one to three months (confirm current pricing) |
The honest read is that BMJ OnExamination is a capable general-medicine and SCE revision platform for the specialties it covers, and its MRCP banks contain real, examinable infection content. What it is not is a CICE bank, an SCE Infectious Diseases bank, or an infection-specialty product. Any "adaptive" use of it for infection is therefore adaptive use of a general-medicine bank, which is fine for foundations but cannot, on its own, cover the CICE blueprint.
The examination you are actually preparing for
CICE is a written, computer-based examination of two papers, each 100 single-best-answer questions over three hours — 200 questions in total across the day, with a small number of picture-based items (around five across the two papers) and no negative marking. It is designed to test the whole core infection curriculum and the Combined Infection Training component shared by microbiology, virology and infectious diseases. Candidates typically sit it after not less than twelve months of combined infection training. Verify the current regulations, dates and blueprint weightings on rcpath.org, which is the authority here; the historic SCE format (two papers of 100 best-of-five under MRCP(UK)) is now context only.
Blueprint coverage audit: mind the low-volume domains
The title's warning matters most for the small-weight domains, because an adaptive or "high-impact" feed naturally gravitates to high-yield, high-volume clinical syndromes and quietly starves the 2.5–5% areas that still carry examinable marks. The table maps the CICE blueprint (indicative weightings — verify current figures on rcpath.org) against what a general MRCP bank such as BMJ OnExamination realistically supplies.
| CICE domain | Indicative weight | Covered by a general MRCP bank? | Dedicated infection source needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clinical syndromes | ~32.5% | Partly — the strongest overlap | Infection curriculum + guidelines |
| Antimicrobials | ~15% | Partly | Antimicrobial SmPCs (eMC), local/UKHSA guidance |
| Laboratory practice | ~15% | Minimal | Microbiology/virology texts |
| Basic science | ~10% | Minimal | Infection curriculum |
| Public health | ~5% | Minimal | UKHSA guidance |
| HIV | ~5% | Partly | BHIVA guidelines |
| Vaccination | ~5% | Minimal | UKHSA Green Book |
| Infection prevention & control | ~5% | Minimal | IPC guidance |
| Travel medicine | ~5% | Minimal | Travel/infection resources |
| Health & safety | ~2.5% | Minimal | Regulatory/lab guidance |
The pattern is clear: a general MRCP bank helps with clinical syndromes and some antimicrobial and HIV content, and leaves the laboratory, public-health, IPC, vaccination and health-and-safety domains almost entirely to dedicated infection material. Note the UK medicines convention throughout — antimicrobial facts come from the SmPC/eMC and UK infection guidance, not from any pocket formulary.
Using adaptive analytics without hiding unattempted domains
If you use BMJ OnExamination for the general-medicine infection foundations, impose domain floors so the personalised feed cannot mask what you have never attempted. Complete a small, blueprint-stratified baseline first, set a minimum number of attempted items in each low-volume area, and read your analytics as coverage-adjusted rather than as a single rising percentage. An error taxonomy keeps review honest: separate genuine knowledge gaps from misread stems, premature closure, guideline errors, calculation slips and time-pressure mistakes, because each needs a different fix — a source read, a slow re-read habit, or simply more timed exposure.
Three mistakes this repoint is designed to stop
The first mistake is buying a general MRCP subscription and treating it as SCE Infectious Diseases preparation. A general bank is a reasonable foundations tool, but it was never mapped to the infection curriculum, and its analytics will happily report a healthy percentage while the laboratory, virology and public-health domains sit untouched. The second mistake is letting a personalised or "high-impact" feed set your agenda. Adaptive-style feeds optimise for the questions most candidates get wrong, which pulls attention toward common clinical syndromes and away from the small-weight domains that still carry marks; without domain floors you will over-train the middle of the blueprint and starve the edges. The third mistake is measuring readiness by completion. Turning a bank green tells you how much you have consumed, not whether you can retrieve infection knowledge under time pressure on questions you have never seen. Each of these errors shares one root cause — trusting a single rising number — and each is fixed the same way: a blueprint-stratified baseline, explicit floors in every domain, and first-attempt accuracy on fresh items as the readiness signal rather than the percentage complete.
Readiness and exit criteria for CICE
Readiness is not "bank completed". It is a coverage floor met in every domain including the low-weight ones, stable first-attempt performance on unseen items, defensible pacing at roughly a hundred questions in three hours, retention across a spaced interval, and a calibration against official-style material. Bank completion alone predicts little; the number that matters is first-attempt accuracy on questions you have never seen.
A seven-day audit-and-fill week
Use BMJ OnExamination for one job — general-medicine infection foundations with analytics — and iatroX for unseen transfer measurement. No proprietary-algorithm claims are made for either.
| Day | Job | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | Blueprint-stratified baseline across all CICE domains; record floors | 45 min |
| Tue | BMJ OnExamination MRCP infection block (clinical syndromes); error codes | 40 min |
| Wed | Dedicated low-volume domain (IPC or vaccination) from infection guidance | 40 min |
| Thu | Antimicrobials via SmPC/eMC and UK guidance; write management rules | 35 min |
| Fri | Fresh, unseen iatroX block to test the week; no repeats | 30 min |
| Sat | Timed mixed mock; review pacing and premature-closure errors | 90 min |
| Sun | Re-check domain floors; schedule next week's weak domains | 30 min |
Continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue BMJ OnExamination only for the general-medicine infection foundations it genuinely covers.
- Supplement — in fact, require — dedicated CICE/infection material for the laboratory, public-health, IPC, vaccination and health-and-safety domains a general bank cannot reach.
- Switch your framing entirely from "SCE Infectious Diseases" to CICE and the RCPath regulations; the old target is gone.
- Stop paying for any bank once your constraint is unseen-question performance and coverage of low-volume domains rather than exposure to more high-yield syndromes.
Frequently asked questions
Is BMJ OnExamination enough for SCE Infectious Diseases on its own? No, on two counts. The SCE Infectious Diseases was withdrawn after 2017, so there is no such examination to be "enough" for, and BMJ OnExamination does not offer an Infectious Diseases product in any case. For the live target — CICE — its MRCP banks help only with the general-medicine infection foundations and cannot cover the laboratory, public-health and infection-control domains.
Which SCE Infectious Diseases component does BMJ OnExamination not reproduce well? Since the examination no longer exists, the meaningful answer is about CICE: a general MRCP bank does not reproduce the laboratory-practice, basic-science, infection-prevention-and-control, vaccination and health-and-safety domains, and it under-serves the microbiology and virology depth that CICE assumes. Those are precisely the low-volume blueprint areas an adaptive feed tends to neglect.
How many BMJ OnExamination questions should I complete per day for SCE Infectious Diseases? Volume against a withdrawn exam is the wrong metric. If you use the platform for infection foundations, a reviewed 20 to 40 questions a day is reasonable, but count coverage of CICE domains, not raw totals. All product counts and prices here are vendor-reported as of 20 July 2026 — verify on onexamination.com.
When should I stop using BMJ OnExamination and move to mixed mocks? Move to predominantly mixed, timed CICE-style mocks once your foundations are secure and your domain floors are met, typically in the final few weeks. Continuing to drill high-yield MRCP syndromes past that point will not close the infection-specialty gaps that decide the result.
How should I combine BMJ OnExamination with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each a single job: BMJ OnExamination for general-medicine infection foundations and analytics, iatroX for unseen, timed infection-knowledge measurement, and dedicated infection sources for the specialty domains. Never re-answer a seen item as if it were fresh, and hold a protected pool of unseen iatroX questions for weekly readiness checks only.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 20 July 2026. Product figures are vendor-reported and were taken from the vendors' own pages on that date; verify current details before relying on them. This article deliberately leads with a coverage finding: the SCE Infectious Diseases was withdrawn after 2017 and BMJ OnExamination lists no such product, so the honest advice is to repoint at the RCPath CICE. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing UK question bank; its role here is confined to unseen infection-knowledge measurement, not to reproducing the CICE, which it does not claim to be. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com. References: The Federation (SCE Infectious Diseases withdrawal notice); Royal College of Pathologists (CICE regulations, blueprint and FRCPath Part 1 in Infection); BMJ OnExamination product pages; UK infection guidance (UKHSA, BHIVA) and the SmPC/eMC for antimicrobials; the iatroX UK question bank; and "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score".