This is a working plan for a higher specialty trainee who has bought, or is about to buy, a Licence Medical Respiratory Medicine question bank and wants a disciplined way to use it for the SCE in Respiratory Medicine. It addresses the written knowledge component only. The principal limitation to plan around is that Licence Medical does not publish a live question count, price or feature set, so you should verify what you are buying before you build a schedule on it.
What Licence Medical offers for SCE Respiratory Medicine right now
Licence Medical (license-medical.com) describes itself as a provider of online SCE revision courses, question banks and mock tests, supported by revision notes in PDF form. Respiratory Medicine is one of the specialties it lists, alongside nephrology, gastroenterology, endocrinology and diabetes, rheumatology, acute medicine, medical oncology, palliative medicine and neurology. The important editorial point is that the public site does not disclose the numbers you need to plan properly.
| Item to check | What Licence Medical states publicly | Status on 21 July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Live question count | Not published on the public pages | Verify on the product page before purchase |
| Access period | Not published | Verify (ask whether it is 3, 6 or 12 months) |
| Price | Not published; payment via Stripe or PayPal | Verify current fee on the product page |
| AI or adaptive features | Not described | Do not assume adaptivity; treat as a fixed bank unless the vendor confirms otherwise |
| Mock tests | Mentioned in general marketing terms | Verify the number, length and whether they are timed |
| Components covered | Written SCE knowledge (question bank + notes) | Written knowledge only; no OSCE or workplace element (none exists in the SCE) |
Everything in the second column above is vendor-described and unverified as to quantity; treat it as vendor-reported and confirm it on the day you buy. Do not build a day count around a question total you have not seen.
The exam you are actually preparing for
The SCE in Respiratory Medicine is one of the Specialty Certificate Examinations delivered by the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK. The format is the standard SCE structure: two papers of 100 best-of-five questions each, 200 questions in total, three hours per paper, sat on one day, computer-based through Surpass at a test centre. Each correct answer scores one mark and there is no negative marking. It is normally taken in the penultimate year of higher specialty training, and sittings are scheduled periodically through the year — confirm current dates on thefederation.uk.
The content is governed by a published blueprint mapped to the respiratory curriculum. The domains you must be able to cover include airways disease (asthma, COPD, bronchiectasis), interstitial lung disease, pulmonary infection including tuberculosis, pulmonary vascular disease, pleural disease, lung cancer and thoracic oncology, sleep-related breathing disorders and ventilation, respiratory failure and acute presentations, occupational and environmental lung disease, cystic fibrosis and the underpinning physiology, immunology and genetics. The blueprint is the authority on weighting; a vendor's topic split is a convenience, not the specification. Keep the two separate in your head: the Federation blueprint tells you what will be tested and roughly how much; a third-party bank only tells you what that vendor happened to write.
Build a blueprint inventory and protect an unseen pool
Before you answer a single Licence Medical question, list the blueprint domains in a spreadsheet and put three columns beside each: questions attempted, questions correct, and a confidence flag. This is your coverage map, and it matters far more than any headline percentage. The generic blueprint-coverage method is set out in the iatroX pillar on why completion is not coverage; borrow it wholesale.
At the same time, ring-fence an unseen pool. Decide in advance that a defined slice of your practice — a fresh iatroX block, an official mock, or a Licence Medical mock you have never opened — will only ever be used timed and mixed, never for learning. If you drill every item you own, you destroy your ability to measure readiness later, because every question becomes a memory test. Protect the measurement set from the start.
First pass: mixed by default, filtered only where foundations are weak
Start mixed. Answering a random spread of respiratory topics forces you to recognise a problem cold, which is what the exam does; topic-filtered blocks quietly tell you the answer by telling you the subject. The exception is a domain where your foundations are genuinely thin — say you have never worked in a sleep service, or your interstitial lung disease knowledge is shallow. There, a short topic-filtered block to build the scaffold is sensible before you fold that domain back into mixed practice. The rule is simple: filter to learn a weak area, then return to mixed to test it.
Review each miss with an error code, not a transcription
The slowest, least effective review habit is copying the whole explanation into notes. Instead, tag every miss with one error code and commit to one corrective action.
- K — knowledge gap: you did not know the fact. Action: read the specific guideline point, not the whole chapter.
- R — misread: you missed a detail in the stem. Action: re-read the stem and name the phrase you skipped.
- D — discrimination: you got to two options and chose wrong. Action: write the one feature that separates them.
- P — pacing: you ran out of time or rushed. Action: log the time and move the item to a timed set.
- G — guideline currency: you used out-of-date guidance. Action: check the current BTS or NICE position.
- C — calculation or data: you misread a blood gas, spirometry trace or effusion result. Action: redo the calculation by hand.
A worked example: you meet an item on a breathless patient with new fibrotic change on CT and pick an outdated management step. That is a G. The corrective action is to read the current interstitial lung disease and antifibrotic-eligibility summary once, not to re-read the entire ILD section. Then you move on.
Transfer practice beats re-answering the same item
Re-answering the question you just got wrong mostly tests whether you remember the answer. Instead, answer a new item that tests the same principle. If you missed the antifibrotic-eligibility item, do a fresh question on progressive fibrosing ILD criteria before you ever revisit the original. This is where a second, cross-specialty bank such as iatroX earns its place: it supplies unseen items on the same underlying principle so you can prove the learning transferred rather than that you memorised one stem. iatroX is not a specialty-specific respiratory SCE bank, and it does not claim to be; its role here is the unseen-item and spaced-retrieval layer.
Switch to mixed timed blocks once domain floors are met
You do not need to finish the bank. Once every blueprint domain has a floor — a sensible working rule is at least a couple of dozen items attempted with your accuracy stabilising above your target — switch the emphasis to mixed, timed blocks at exam pace. That pace is 100 questions in 180 minutes, or roughly 1.8 minutes per item. Practising at pace exposes the pacing and discrimination errors that untimed drilling hides, and it does so while you still have time to fix them.
Exit criteria: what "ready" actually looks like
Stop when the evidence says stop, not when the completion bar hits 100 per cent. Ready looks like: every blueprint domain sampled and none below your accuracy floor; a held-out, unseen, timed set performing at or above target; pacing under control at roughly 1.8 minutes per item; retention holding when you re-test misses a week later; and your bank performance broadly agreeing with an official calibration point — the Federation or MRCP practice material, or a BTS SCE course mock. If those five are green, more questions add little.
Worked example: seven days around clinical work
A registrar on a busy rota, four weeks out, revising in the gaps. Licence Medical does one defined job here — first-pass coverage and topic drilling — and iatroX does another, unseen measurement. No proprietary-algorithm claims are made or needed; the spacing below is done by hand on a 1–3–7 day interval.
- Day 1: 40-item mixed Licence Medical block, untimed, to map weak domains onto your inventory.
- Day 2: topic-filtered block on the weakest domain (say pulmonary vascular disease), then error-code the misses.
- Day 3: transfer practice on the flagged principles, plus a second weak domain.
- Day 4: 50-item mixed Licence Medical block, timed at exam pace, pacing the priority.
- Day 5: a fresh, unseen iatroX block (mixed medicine), timed, as an independent readiness check; compare the score to your Licence Medical average.
- Day 6: an official calibration point — a Federation or MRCP practice paper under timed conditions.
- Day 7: re-test the week's misses (the 1–3–7 spacing lands here) and rest.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
| Signal you can measure | Decision |
|---|---|
| Coverage incomplete, accuracy still climbing per domain | Continue Licence Medical |
| Two or more domains have no unseen items left to test on | Supplement with a second bank (e.g. iatroX) for unseen measurement |
| Explanations feel thin or you distrust the referencing on key topics | Switch your primary to a bank whose depth you have verified |
| All five exit criteria green with weeks to spare | Stop new questions; move to spaced re-test and official mocks |
Base every row on a measurable gap, not on novelty or on the sunk cost of a bank you have already paid for.
Bottom line
Licence Medical can serve as a first-pass and topic-drilling bank for the SCE in Respiratory Medicine, provided you verify its count, access period and price before you commit, because none of those are published. Wrap it in a blueprint inventory, review by error code rather than transcription, protect an unseen pool, and let a second cross-specialty bank such as iatroX measure whether the learning transferred. Completion is not the goal; a green set of exit criteria is.
FAQ
Is Licence Medical enough for SCE Respiratory Medicine on its own? It can be a workable primary bank for the written paper if its verified depth and currency are adequate, but "enough" is a property of your evidence, not of any single product. Because Licence Medical does not publish a question count, you cannot judge sufficiency from the outside; confirm the number, then treat the exam as passed only when your exit criteria are green on unseen, timed material rather than when you have finished the bank.
Which SCE Respiratory Medicine component does Licence Medical not reproduce well? The honest answer is that the SCE has no separate practical or OSCE component to reproduce — it is entirely a written best-of-five paper — so the relevant gap is not clinical skills but exam-condition realism. A study bank used untimed and topic-filtered does not reproduce the mixed, timed, no-negative-marking pressure of two three-hour papers; you have to recreate that yourself with timed mixed blocks and an official mock.
How many Licence Medical questions should I complete per day for SCE Respiratory Medicine? There is no single correct number, and pace matters more than volume; a sustainable figure for a working trainee is often 30 to 50 reviewed questions a day, where "reviewed" means error-coded with one corrective action, not merely answered. Completing 150 unreviewed questions teaches less than completing 40 that you actually process, so set the target by how many you can genuinely review around clinical work.
When should I stop using Licence Medical and move to mixed mocks? Move to mixed, timed mocks once every blueprint domain has a floor of attempted items and your per-domain accuracy has stabilised, even if the bank is not finished. The trigger is domain coverage plus stable accuracy, not a completion percentage; continuing to drill filtered blocks after that point mostly rehearses recognition and hides the pacing problems a timed mock would reveal.
How should I combine Licence Medical with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each bank one job and do not answer the same content twice: use Licence Medical for first-pass coverage and topic drilling, and reserve iatroX as the unseen, timed measurement layer and spaced-retrieval check, since iatroX is a cross-specialty UK knowledge bank rather than a respiratory-specific SCE product. This 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 referenced here are vendor-reported and were not published as verifiable counts or prices on the checking date, so confirm them on the product page before purchase. Disclosure: iatroX operates a question bank that competes for revision time; its role is confined here to the cross-specialty knowledge and unseen-measurement jobs that a specialty SCE bank does not claim, and it is not a respiratory-specific SCE bank. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians (thefederation.uk) SCE Respiratory Medicine format and blueprint pages; British Thoracic Society SCE 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.