This is a working plan for a gastroenterology and hepatology trainee using, or considering, a Licence Medical question bank for ESEGH — the European Specialty Examination in Gastroenterology and Hepatology, which serves as the specialty certificate exam for the field. It covers the written knowledge component, which is the whole of ESEGH. The principal limitation to plan around is that Licence Medical does not publish a live question count, price or feature set, so verify what you are actually buying before you schedule your revision around it.
What Licence Medical offers for ESEGH right now
Licence Medical (license-medical.com) markets online SCE revision courses, question banks and mock tests, plus PDF revision notes, and lists gastroenterology among its specialties alongside nephrology, respiratory medicine and others. As with its other banks, the numbers a candidate needs to plan are not on the public pages.
| Item to check | What Licence Medical states publicly | Status on 21 July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Live question count | Not published | Verify on the product page; confirm it is badged for ESEGH, not the withdrawn SCE Gastroenterology |
| Access period | Not published | Verify the subscription length |
| Price | Not published; Stripe or PayPal checkout | Verify current fee |
| AI or adaptive features | Not described | Treat as a fixed bank unless the vendor confirms adaptivity |
| Hepatology depth | Not quantified | Verify coverage of liver disease, which is a large ESEGH component |
| Components covered | Written knowledge (bank + notes) | Written only; ESEGH has no OSCE or practical station |
Treat every entry in the middle column as vendor-reported and unverified as to quantity. One ESEGH-specific check matters more than the others: confirm the bank is written for the current European syllabus and not simply the legacy UK SCE Gastroenterology content, because the exam changed in 2018.
The exam you are actually preparing for
ESEGH replaced both the UK SCE in Gastroenterology and the earlier European board examination in January 2018. It is delivered by the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK together with the European gastroenterology and hepatology community, including United European Gastroenterology and the European Section and Board of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and it is approved for UK trainees. The structure is the standard specialty certificate format: two papers of 100 best-of-five questions, 200 questions in total, three hours per paper, computer-based through Surpass at a test centre, one mark per correct answer and no negative marking. Confirm the current sitting dates and fee on thefederation.uk.
The syllabus spans the full breadth of luminal gastroenterology and hepatology. The domains you must be able to cover include oesophageal disorders, stomach and duodenal disorders, small intestinal disorders, colonic disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, gastrointestinal haemorrhage, pancreatic disorders, the biliary tree, liver disorders and nutrition, with endoscopy, transplantation and functional disease running through them. Hepatology is a substantial slice, not an afterthought. The European curriculum is the authority on weighting; a vendor's topic split is a convenience only.
Build a blueprint inventory and protect an unseen pool
List the syllabus domains in a spreadsheet and, beside each, track questions attempted, questions correct and a confidence flag. That coverage map is worth more than any headline percentage, and the method is the one set out in the iatroX pillar on why completion is not coverage. Pay particular attention to hepatology, because a candidate whose day job is mostly luminal endoscopy can finish a bank with a strong overall figure and a quiet, unmeasured liver-disease gap.
At the same time, ring-fence an unseen pool — a slice of iatroX items, an official specimen, or a Licence Medical mock you have never opened — for timed, mixed use only. If you drill everything you own, you lose the ability to measure readiness later, because every question becomes a memory test.
First pass: mixed by default, filtered only where foundations are weak
Start mixed, so you have to recognise the topic cold. Topic-filtered blocks cue the answer by naming the subject, which is not what the exam does. Filter only where your foundations are genuinely thin — commonly hepatology or nutrition for an endoscopy-heavy trainee, or advanced IBD therapeutics for someone who has not done a tertiary IBD attachment. Use the filter to build the scaffold, then fold that domain back into mixed practice to test it honestly.
Review each miss with an error code, not a transcription
Tag each miss with one code and commit to one corrective action, rather than transcribing the explanation.
- K — knowledge gap: read the specific guideline point, not the chapter.
- R — misread: name the stem detail you skipped.
- D — discrimination: write the one feature separating your two finalists.
- P — pacing: log the time and move the item to a timed set.
- G — guideline currency: check the current position, for example on hepatitis or IBD escalation.
- C — calculation or data: redo the score or interpretation by hand.
A worked example: an item on acute severe ulcerative colitis where you pick the wrong escalation step or misjudge the day-three assessment. If you knew the framework but chose badly between two plausible options, that is a D; the corrective action is to write the single discriminator — the day-three stool frequency and CRP thresholds that flag rescue therapy — not to re-read the whole IBD section. Then move on.
Transfer practice beats re-answering the same item
Do not re-answer the item you just missed; answer a new one that tests the same principle. If you missed the acute severe UC escalation item, do a fresh question on rescue-therapy choice and colectomy risk before revisiting the original. iatroX supplies unseen items on the same underlying principle, which lets you prove the point transferred rather than that you memorised one stem. iatroX is not a gastroenterology-specific ESEGH bank and does not claim to be; its job is the unseen-item and spaced-retrieval layer.
Switch to mixed timed blocks once domain floors are met
Finishing the bank is not the objective. Once every syllabus domain has a floor of attempted items and your accuracy has stabilised above target, shift to mixed, timed blocks at exam pace — 100 questions in 180 minutes, about 1.8 minutes per item. Timed mixed practice surfaces the pacing and discrimination errors that untimed drilling conceals, while there is still time to correct them.
Exit criteria: what "ready" actually looks like
Stop on evidence, not on a completion bar. Ready looks like: every syllabus domain sampled, including hepatology, with none below your accuracy floor; a held-out, unseen, timed set at or above target; pacing near 1.8 minutes per item; retention holding on re-tested misses a week later; and broad agreement between your bank score and an official calibration point. Green on those five means more questions add little.
Worked example: seven days around clinical work
A trainee on a full clinical week, four weeks from the exam. Licence Medical does first-pass coverage and topic drilling; iatroX does unseen measurement. The spacing below is done by hand on a 1–3–7 day interval, with no proprietary-algorithm claims.
- Day 1: 40-item mixed Licence Medical block, untimed, mapped to your inventory.
- Day 2: topic-filtered hepatology block, then error-code the misses.
- Day 3: transfer practice on flagged principles, plus a second weak domain such as pancreaticobiliary.
- Day 4: 50-item mixed Licence Medical block, timed at exam pace.
- Day 5: a fresh, unseen iatroX block, timed, as an independent readiness check; compare to your Licence Medical average.
- Day 6: official calibration — a Federation specimen or practice paper under timed conditions; note that UEG, EASL and ESGE e-learning are teaching libraries, useful for filling knowledge gaps but not mock papers.
- Day 7: re-test the week's misses and rest.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
| Signal you can measure | Decision |
|---|---|
| Coverage incomplete, per-domain accuracy still climbing | Continue Licence Medical |
| Hepatology or another domain has no unseen items left to test on | Supplement with a second bank (e.g. iatroX) for unseen measurement |
| Referencing or currency looks thin on liver disease or IBD therapeutics | Switch primary to a bank whose depth you have verified |
| All five exit criteria green with time to spare | Stop new questions; move to spaced re-test and official material |
Every row rests on a measured gap, not on novelty or sunk cost.
Bottom line
Licence Medical can be a first-pass and topic-drilling bank for ESEGH if you verify its count, access period, price and — specifically — its hepatology depth and current-syllabus alignment, none of which are published. Surround it with a blueprint inventory, error-code review, a protected unseen pool, and a cross-specialty second bank such as iatroX to confirm transfer. A green exit-criteria set, not completion, is the finish line.
FAQ
Is Licence Medical enough for ESEGH on its own? It may be a serviceable primary bank if its verified depth, hepatology coverage and currency are adequate, but sufficiency is a function of your evidence, not of any one product, and Licence Medical publishes no count from which to judge it. Confirm the number and the syllabus alignment, then regard yourself as ready only when your exit criteria are green on unseen, timed material rather than when the bank is finished.
Which ESEGH component does Licence Medical not reproduce well? ESEGH has no separate practical or endoscopy-simulator station to reproduce — it is a written best-of-five exam — so the real gap is exam-condition realism rather than clinical skill. A bank used untimed and filtered does not recreate two timed three-hour papers with no negative marking, and it may under-weight hepatology relative to the official blueprint, so you must supply both the timed conditions and a deliberate liver-disease check yourself.
How many Licence Medical questions should I complete per day for ESEGH? There is no single right number, and reviewed depth beats raw volume; 30 to 50 error-coded questions a day is a realistic target for a working trainee. Answering more than you can genuinely review teaches less, so let the ceiling be set by how many you can process with one corrective action each around clinical work.
When should I stop using Licence Medical and move to mixed mocks? Switch to mixed, timed mocks once every syllabus domain, hepatology included, has a floor of attempted items and stable accuracy, even if the bank is unfinished. Coverage plus stable accuracy is the trigger, not a completion percentage; further filtered drilling after that mainly rehearses recognition and hides pacing problems.
How should I combine Licence Medical with iatroX without duplicating practice? Assign each bank one job and never answer the same content twice: Licence Medical for first-pass coverage and topic drilling, iatroX as the unseen, timed measurement and spaced-retrieval layer, since iatroX is a cross-specialty UK knowledge bank rather than an ESEGH-specific product. That is the two-Q-bank rule applied honestly — one bank to learn on, one kept clean to measure on.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. Any Licence Medical figures here are vendor-reported and were not published as verifiable counts or prices on the checking date; confirm them on the product page before purchase. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing question bank; its role is confined here to the cross-specialty knowledge and unseen-measurement jobs an ESEGH-specific bank does not claim, and it is not a gastroenterology-specific SCE bank. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians (thefederation.uk) ESEGH format and FAQ pages; United European Gastroenterology and EASL education resources; Licence Medical (license-medical.com) product pages; iatroX, Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score; iatroX, why question-bank completion is not blueprint coverage; iatroX comparison hub.