This workflow is for a palliative medicine trainee who has chosen, or is trialling, Licence Medical as an SCE question source and wants a disciplined way to use it around clinical work. It addresses the written SCE specifically, and its principal limitation is set by the vendor: as of 21 July 2026 Licence Medical does not publish an accessible question count, price or access period for its Palliative Medicine bank, so this workflow is built to work regardless of the total and to lean on protected unseen measurement rather than on "finishing" a bank of unknown size.
That constraint is a feature here. A workflow that depends on knowing the exact question count is fragile; one built around blueprint coverage, coded error review and unseen timed performance works whether the bank holds three hundred items or a thousand. Verify Licence Medical's current figures on license-medical.com before you commit money, but you do not need them to start using the bank well.
What Licence Medical offers right now
Current-state box, last checked 21 July 2026, source license-medical.com; vendor-reported where stated, unverified where the vendor does not publish.
- Palliative Medicine SCE bank: listed, among roughly nine SCE specialty banks plus MRCP Part 1 and Part 2.
- Question count / price / access period: not published on accessible pages — verify directly before purchase.
- AI/adaptive features: none advertised; the site emphasises detailed explanations and updated guidelines, so do not assume adaptive delivery.
- Free trial/demo: not confirmed — request one before paying.
For a published-figure comparator, StudyPRN reports a 599-question palliative bank at £199 for three months (vendor-reported, 21 July 2026); BMJ OnExamination has no palliative SCE bank. Those are useful reference points when you weigh value.
The exam this workflow serves
The SCE in Palliative Medicine (Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians) is two papers of 100 best-of-five questions, 200 total, three hours each, one day, computer-based, one mark per correct, no negative marking. It is normally sat in the penultimate training year. The 2023 blueprint weights the paper roughly: other symptoms secondary to life-limiting disease 48, pharmacology and therapeutics 35, care of the dying 20, concurrent problems 20, emergencies 20, palliation of life-limiting disease 20, legal issues 15, pain 15, procedures 5, rehabilitation 2. The workflow below is organised around meeting a floor in every one of those domains, not around a completion percentage.
Step 1: Build a blueprint inventory and protect an unseen pool
Before your first block, set up two things. First, a blueprint inventory — a simple table with one row per domain and columns for questions attempted, first-attempt accuracy and confidence — so every block has a home and you can see coverage forming. Second, and non-negotiable, protect a pool of unseen questions from the start. Ring-fence a portion of the bank (and plan to use iatroX for additional unseen items) that you will not touch during topic practice, reserving it for timed mixed assessment later. If you burn through the whole bank in topic mode, you will have no clean instrument left to measure readiness, and your percentage will reflect recognition of items you have already seen.
Step 2: First pass — topic blocks only where foundations are weak
Resist the instinct to grind every topic from question one. Use topic-filtered blocks only where your foundations are genuinely weak — the domain you avoid, the calculations you dread, the legal scenarios you guess. Everywhere your foundations are sound, start mixed, because topic-filtered blocks cue you to the domain and inflate accuracy: knowing every question is about opioids makes the opioid question easier than it will ever be in a mixed paper. Topic mode is a scaffold for weak domains, not the default mode for the whole bank.
Step 3: Review each miss with an error code and one corrective action
The review, not the attempt, is where learning happens — and the commonest waste is transcribing the whole explanation into notes you will never reread. Instead, for every miss, assign an error code and commit to exactly one corrective action.
- Knowledge gap → learn the specific fact from an authoritative source (curriculum, Palliative Care Formulary, SmPC/eMC), once.
- Reasoning gap → write the one-line management principle you missed.
- Calculation slip → redo the conversion cold and log the arithmetic trap.
- Misread → note the exact word in the stem you skipped.
One code, one action, one line. This keeps review fast enough to sustain around clinical shifts and turns each miss into a testable correction rather than a paragraph of passive notes.
Step 4: Use transfer practice before repeating an item
Do not immediately re-attempt the question you got wrong; re-attempting the same item mostly tests whether you remember its answer. Instead, answer a new item that tests the same principle — a different opioid conversion, a different capacity scenario — before you ever revisit the original. If Licence Medical does not hold a second item on that principle, generate one from a different source; this is a natural job for iatroX, whose cross-specialty items test the same underlying pharmacology or emergency principle on a stem you have not seen. Transfer, not repetition, is what proves the correction generalises.
Step 5: Switch to mixed timed blocks when domain floors are met
The trigger to move from topic mode to mixed timed blocks is meeting your domain floors — not finishing the bank, and not the calendar. As soon as each domain clears its floor on unseen items, switch the bulk of your practice to full-length or half-length blueprint-weighted timed blocks, even if large parts of the bank remain unattempted. An incomplete first pass with solid domain floors and good mixed-block performance is a stronger position than a 100%-complete bank with two weak domains hidden inside the average.
Step 6: Exit criteria — evidence, not completion
You are ready to stop new questions when you can tick these, none of which is "finished the bank".
- Coverage: every blueprint domain sampled on unseen items, none below floor.
- Unseen timed performance: at least one full-length blueprint-weighted block sat under exam conditions and interpreted by domain.
- Pacing: 100 questions in three hours with review time spare.
- Retention: domains fixed weeks ago still hold on re-test.
- Official-material calibration: your unseen performance anchored once to the official practice paper, not drilled.
Hit these and additional questions add little; miss any and the gap tells you your next action.
Worked example: a seven-day plan around clinical work
Three weeks out, working clinically, Licence Medical doing one job (domain volume) and iatroX doing another (unseen transfer). No proprietary-algorithm claims; "adaptive" means re-weighting toward flagged domains.
| Day | Licence Medical (domain volume) | iatroX (unseen transfer) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | 20 items in weakest domain (topic mode), code errors | — | 40 min |
| Tue | 20 mixed items, one corrective action each | — | 40 min |
| Wed | 15 emergencies + care-of-dying items | 15 unseen mixed items, timed | 50 min |
| Thu | 15 pharmacology/pain items, redo any conversions cold | — | 40 min |
| Fri | Review coded errors only; no new topic block | 20 unseen mixed items, timed | 40 min |
| Sat | — | 50-question blueprint-weighted timed block | 90 min |
| Sun | Re-test principles still failing (transfer items) | Recheck flagged domains on unseen items | 45 min |
The protected unseen pool is spent deliberately on Saturday, not leaked across the week.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue if domain floors are rising and coded error types are shrinking.
- Supplement with a second source if coverage is uneven or you are recognising stems — the standard two-bank move.
- Switch primary bank only on measured deficiency (stale guidance, thin distractors, missing domains), never for novelty or because you have paid for it.
- Stop new questions in any domain already above target on unseen items.
Bottom line
Licence Medical can be used well for SCE Palliative Medicine even though its published data is thin, provided you drive the workflow with blueprint coverage, coded error review, protected unseen measurement and evidence-based exit criteria rather than a completion percentage. Verify its figures before you pay, reserve a clean unseen pool from day one, and let domain floors — not the size of the bank — decide when you switch to mixed blocks and when you stop.
Frequently asked questions
Is Licence Medical enough for SCE Palliative Medicine on its own? It may serve as a primary volume source if a sample confirms good application-level items and current UK guidance, but "enough" cannot be asserted while its count, currency and price are unpublished, and no single MCQ bank trains the calculation, ethics and formulary-production skills the exam also samples. Verify the figures, pair it with the official practice paper, and add an unseen cross-specialty layer for calibration rather than relying on one bank.
Which SCE Palliative Medicine component does Licence Medical not reproduce well? As a best-of-five bank it reproduces recognition but not production — it will not, by itself, make you perform opioid conversions cold or reason an unfamiliar capacity decision unprompted, and it may under-serve the general-medicine "concurrent problems" and legal domains. Confirm the domain distribution on a sample and train the production skills separately against worked keys and a clinician.
How many Licence Medical questions should I complete per day for SCE Palliative Medicine? For most trainees revising around clinical work, 20 to 40 marked and coded items a day is sustainable, but because Licence Medical does not publish a total, plan by domain coverage and error review rather than by "questions remaining". Quality of review — one code and one corrective action per miss — matters more than raw daily volume.
When should I stop using Licence Medical and move to mixed mocks? Move to mixed timed blocks as soon as every domain clears its floor on unseen items, even with much of the bank unattempted; completion is not the exit criterion. If bank accuracy keeps climbing while your unseen performance from another source plateaus, that plateau — not the calendar — is the signal to stop topic drilling and simulate.
How should I combine Licence Medical with iatroX without duplicating practice? Assign one job to each: Licence Medical for targeted, domain-specific volume; iatroX for unseen, cross-specialty, timed transfer that measures whether corrections generalise. Because iatroX is a general UK/MRCP-level bank, not a palliative-specific one, it re-tests the same underlying principles on stems you have not seen, so you are measuring transfer rather than duplicating practice — the approach set out in the two-Q-bank rule.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. Where Licence Medical does not publish a figure, this workflow says so rather than inventing one; vendor figures are vendor-reported and change without notice — verify at source. Disclosure: iatroX operates a UK question bank and competes with the platforms named; its role here is confined to unseen, cross-specialty measurement, which Licence Medical does not claim, and it is not a palliative-specific SCE bank. Corrections via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians — SCE in Palliative Medicine and 2023 blueprint (thefederation.uk); Licence Medical (license-medical.com) listings; StudyPRN and BMJ OnExamination for comparison; Palliative Care Formulary and SmPC/eMC. Internal: the two-Q-bank rule, the SCE Palliative Medicine content-gap checklist, Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score, and the SCE Palliative Medicine question layer at /quiz-landing.
Run a fresh timed block in iatroX and decide your next move — learn, retest, simulate or stop →