This workflow is for higher specialty trainees using Licence Medical as their principal question bank for the SCE Acute Medicine who want a structured loop rather than an open-ended question count. It addresses the written specialty certificate component only. The principal limitation is structural: any single bank measures recall against items you will eventually have seen, so unless you ring-fence unseen material you cannot tell whether your knowledge transfers under timed conditions.
What Licence Medical offers for SCE Acute Medicine right now
Current-state box, last checked 21 July 2026. Licence Medical (license-medical.com) publishes SCE-specialty question banks across several MRCP(UK) specialties — Acute Medicine, Rheumatology, Respiratory Medicine, Endocrinology and Diabetes, Medical Oncology, Palliative Medicine and Neurology among them — each pairing an online question bank with downloadable revision notes in PDF and worked explanations for items.
| Item | Status on 21 July 2026 |
|---|---|
| SCE Acute Medicine bank exists | Confirmed on license-medical.com |
| Question count | Not published publicly — verify after registration |
| Access period / subscription length | Not published publicly — verify on the product page |
| Price | Not published publicly — verify on the product page |
| Explanations and revision notes | Vendor-reported: online bank plus PDF revision notes |
| AI or adaptive sequencing | No such feature stated — treat as a self-directed bank |
The honest position is that at the time of writing the site does not display a headline question count, subscription length or price on its public pages; those appear once you register. Treat any number quoted on third-party pages as vendor-reported and confirm the current question count, access period and price directly on license-medical.com before you buy. Because no adaptive engine is advertised, plan your revision as self-directed sequencing rather than assuming the platform will steer you to your weak domains.
The SCE Acute Medicine exam anchor
Every live Specialty Certificate Examination shares one structure: two papers of 100 best-of-five (BOF) questions — 200 in total — each paper lasting three hours, sat on one day at a computer-based test centre, with one mark per correct answer and no negative marking. What changes between specialties is the blueprint, not the format.
For Acute Medicine, the Society for Acute Medicine and the Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians set a blueprint weighted approximately (and it varies by diet) across the roughly 200-item exam as: cardiovascular medicine 20, gastroenterology and hepatology 20, neurology and ophthalmology 20, respiratory medicine 20, medicine in the elderly 18, diabetes and endocrine medicine 14, infectious diseases 14, musculoskeletal system 12, cancer/palliative care/haematology 10, cardiorespiratory arrest and shock 10, clinical pharmacology and poisoning 10, renal medicine 10, and a further 22 across clinical science, dermatology, psychiatry and other areas. Eligibility opens at ST3; most candidates sit in their penultimate training year; a pass confers MRCP(UK)(Acute Medicine) for those on the relevant curriculum. Anchor your revision to that official weighting and treat any vendor's topic list as a convenience map, not the blueprint itself.
Build a blueprint inventory and ring-fence an unseen pool
Before your first block, copy the blueprint into a simple matrix and split your available Licence Medical questions into two pools: a working pool you learn from, and a protected pool you do not touch until you run timed mixed assessments near the end.
| Blueprint domain | Target share | Working pool | Protected unseen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cardiovascular | ~10% | first 80% | final 20% |
| Respiratory | ~10% | first 80% | final 20% |
| Neurology/ophthalmology | ~10% | first 80% | final 20% |
| Gastroenterology/hepatology | ~10% | first 80% | final 20% |
| Elderly / endocrine / ID / MSK / renal | remainder | first 80% | final 20% |
Holding back the final 15–20% of each domain is the single most important structural decision, because a percentage earned on questions you have already worked is a memory score, not a readiness score. If you would rather not sacrifice Licence Medical volume, iatroX free UK-core banks can supply that unseen measurement layer instead; iatroX does not publish a specialty-specific SCE Acute Medicine bank, but cross-specialty MRCP-level items are precisely what a single bank cannot give you for an honest re-test.
First pass: when to filter by topic, when to go mixed
Topic-filtered blocks are efficient only where your foundations are genuinely weak, because filtering tells you the subject before you read the stem — a cue you will not get in the real paper. Use topic filters for the two or three domains where you know you are shaky (for many acute physicians that is neurology, endocrine emergencies or the poisoning/pharmacology cluster). Everywhere else, start mixed from day one so that diagnosis and retrieval happen without a topic label. If you filter by topic across the whole bank, you will inflate your accuracy and learn to recognise questions rather than reason through them.
Review every miss with an error code, not a transcript
The slowest, least effective revision habit is copying the full explanation into notes. Instead, tag every missed (and every guessed-but-correct) item with one error code and attach one corrective action:
- K knowledge gap — add the single fact to a spaced list.
- R misread stem — slow the first read; underline the lead-in.
- F wrong framework — rehearse the decision rule (for example the sepsis-versus-alternative-source split), not the fact.
- G guideline recency — check the current NICE/CKS/SIGN or SmPC position; date it.
- C calculation/pharmacology slip — redo the sum cleanly once.
- P pacing/blind guess — note it; these are pacing problems, not knowledge problems.
One code, one action, move on. The pattern of codes across a week tells you more than any single explanation.
Transfer practice before you re-attempt
Re-attempting the exact item you failed rewards recognition. Before you revisit an original question, answer a fresh item that tests the same principle — a different vignette of the same electrolyte disturbance, a different drug in the same interaction class. Only once you have got the new item right should you retire the original. This is where an outside bank earns its place: iatroX serves unseen transfer questions and spaced re-tests so you are testing the principle, not your memory of the stem. No claim is made here about any specific adaptive algorithm; the value is simply that the items are new to you.
When to switch to mixed timed blocks
Do not wait for 100% completion. Switch to mixed, timed blocks the moment each domain clears a floor — say, 70% accuracy on unseen items in that domain across a reasonable sample. Timed mixed blocks of 100 questions in 180 minutes rehearse the real pace (a little under two minutes per item) and, more importantly, rehearse switching cold between cardiology, infection and neurology with no topic cue. Incomplete-but-mixed beats complete-but-siloed every time.
Exit criteria that are not "100% complete"
You are ready to sit when five things are true, none of which is bank completion:
- Coverage — every blueprint domain has been worked to its floor, with no untouched area.
- Unseen timed performance — your accuracy on genuinely unseen, timed, mixed items sits comfortably above your notional pass threshold, with margin.
- Pacing — you finish 100-item blocks inside 180 minutes without a late-paper collapse.
- Retention — spaced re-tests of earlier misses hold up a fortnight later.
- Official-material calibration — you have sat the Federation's published sample questions under timing and your performance there agrees with your bank data.
Your bank percentage is not your exam score; it is one input among these five. That distinction is the whole point of ring-fencing an unseen pool.
A seven-day worked example for a busy trainee
For a registrar revising around acute-medical shifts, give each tool one defined job.
- Day 1 (post-nights, light): 20 unseen mixed items on iatroX as a baseline; log domain accuracy. No new learning.
- Day 2: Licence Medical topic block in your weakest domain (say endocrine emergencies), 30 items; code every miss.
- Day 3: transfer practice — 15 fresh iatroX items on the same principles; retire yesterday's originals only after passing the new ones.
- Day 4 (on shift): micro-session, 10 error-code reviews on your phone; no new questions.
- Day 5: Licence Medical mixed block, 40 items, timed; code misses; note pacing.
- Day 6: 100-item timed mixed assessment from your protected pool plus iatroX unseen items; this is your weekly readiness signal.
- Day 7: rest, or a 20-minute spaced re-test of the fortnight's K-coded facts.
Licence Medical does the structured teaching and error review; iatroX supplies the unseen measurement. Neither claims to predict your result.
Continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue with Licence Medical alone if unseen timed accuracy is rising and coverage gaps are closing.
- Supplement with a second bank if two or more domains stall despite focused review — add for the missing content, not for novelty.
- Switch primary bank only if explanations are demonstrably wrong or badly out of date against current guidance, not because a competitor looks shinier.
- Stop adding new questions when all five exit criteria are met; then only retest and rest. Sunk cost in unused questions is not a reason to keep buying time.
Bottom line
Licence Medical is a reasonable engine for structured SCE Acute Medicine revision, provided you supply the discipline it does not: a blueprint matrix, a protected unseen pool, one-code error review and transfer practice. Do that, measure on unseen timed items, calibrate against the Federation's own samples, and let the exit criteria — not the completion bar — tell you when to stop.
Frequently asked questions
Is Licence Medical enough for SCE Acute Medicine on its own? For a well-prepared trainee a single high-quality bank can carry most of the content load, but "enough" depends on evidence, not the brand. It is enough when you can show coverage of every blueprint domain and a comfortable margin on unseen, timed, mixed questions — not when you have simply finished the bank. Because Licence Medical does not advertise an unseen-measurement mode, most candidates should pair it with a small outside pool so their readiness signal is not contaminated by familiarity.
Which SCE Acute Medicine component does Licence Medical not reproduce well? The exam itself is entirely written best-of-five, so there is no OSCE or oral to reproduce; the component a static bank reproduces least well is the unseen, cold-switch pacing of two three-hour papers. Worked banks train recognition of items you have seen; they do not, by design, measure first-encounter reasoning under time. Reserve a protected pool and sit full timed blocks to rehearse that.
How many Licence Medical questions should I complete per day for SCE Acute Medicine? There is no official number, and daily volume matters less than review quality; a sustainable range for someone working clinically is roughly 30–50 well-reviewed items on a study day, with lighter error-code-only sessions on shift days. Completing 100 questions you never review is worth less than 30 you code and act on. Verify pricing and access length on license-medical.com so your daily pace fits the window you have paid for.
When should I stop using Licence Medical and move to mixed mocks? Move to mixed, timed blocks as soon as each domain clears its accuracy floor on unseen items — not when the bank hits 100%. Most candidates should be running weekly full-length timed assessments in the final four to six weeks, using Licence Medical mainly for targeted error review by then. The trigger is domain-floor coverage, not completion percentage.
How should I combine Licence Medical with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each a non-overlapping job: Licence Medical for structured topic learning and worked-explanation review, iatroX for unseen transfer questions and spaced re-tests that measure whether the learning holds. Do not re-answer the same items in both places; the point of the second source is that its questions are new to you, which is what makes the readiness signal trustworthy. This mirrors the two-Q-bank rule — one bank to learn on, one to measure on.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. Vendor figures (question counts, prices, access periods) change frequently and are labelled vendor-reported where quoted; verify them on the product page before purchase. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing question platform, so its role here is confined to jobs Licence Medical does not claim — cross-specialty unseen measurement and spaced retrieval, not a specialty-specific SCE Acute Medicine bank. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com. References: Society for Acute Medicine SCE page (acutemedicine.org.uk) and the Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians (thefederation.uk) for the official format and blueprint; license-medical.com for product facts; iatroX internal reading — Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score, the two-Q-bank rule and the iatroX comparison hub.