This workflow is for UK final-year students and Foundation Year 1 doctors who already have a PassMedicine subscription and want a concrete plan for the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA), not another product ranking. The principal limitation shapes the whole plan: PassMedicine does not sell a dedicated PSA bank. Its prescribing content sits inside the finals/UKMLA subscription as single-best-answer material, so the workflow below uses it for one defined job — consolidating therapeutics knowledge — while protecting a separate stock of unseen, exam-format questions that stay clean for a genuine readiness check.
The reason to be disciplined about this is simple. The most valuable thing you own in PSA revision is a supply of questions you have never seen, because only unseen performance tells you anything true. If you spend your unseen items early, or pre-read your mocks, you are left with recognition memory and a flattering percentage. Everything that follows is built to spend PassMedicine's SBA volume freely while spending your unseen exam-format stock slowly and deliberately.
What PassMedicine offers for the PSA right now
Confirmed on 19 July 2026; vendor-reported and third-party-reported figures are labelled, and anything we could not confirm is flagged for you to check.
| Item | What we found (verify on the product page) |
|---|---|
| Dedicated PSA bank? | No standalone PSA product; PSA-relevant content is an "OSCE & Prescribing Skills Assessment resource" bundled in the finals/UKMLA subscription (vendor wording). |
| Finals/UKMLA bank size | "Over 11,000 SBA questions for medical finals and the UKMLA + high-yield textbook" (vendor-reported). |
| Format | Single best answer, not the PSA's eight task formats. |
| Analytics | Per-topic breakdown, first-attempt versus repeat accuracy, daily peer histogram, "Knowledge Tutor" spaced repetition (vendor-reported). |
| Adaptive engine | Not advertised as a proprietary adaptive-difficulty algorithm; personalisation is spaced repetition plus learner filters. Verify. |
| Access period | Verify current tiers on the product page. |
| Price | Not shown on the summary page we checked; third-party guides commonly cite around £30 for twelve months (third-party-reported). Verify. |
The honest read is that you are running a finals bank against a prescribing exam. That is workable — the knowledge overlaps heavily — provided you never let the finals dashboard stand in for a PSA readiness signal.
The PSA blueprint you are actually training for
The exam is 60 items in two hours for 80 marks. It samples eight question types — Prescribing, Prescription Review, Planning Management, Communicating Information, Calculation Skills, Adverse Drug Reactions, Drug Monitoring and Data Interpretation — across seven clinical domains: Medicine, Surgery, Elderly Care, Paediatrics, Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and General Practice. Prescribing items carry the most marks, split between drug choice and the dose, route and frequency. The pass mark is set by Modified Angoff, so there is no fixed percentage to aim at. The exam is open-reference — an online formulary is available in the interface — and it tests prescribing safety rather than recall. Your workflow therefore has to build format fluency and safe-prescribing habits, not just fact recognition. The official practice papers are the reference standard for what the real thing feels like, and they should be treated as scarce and saved, exactly like your unseen stock.
Baseline week: measure before you personalise
Before you let PassMedicine's spaced repetition and your own topic filters shape the feed, take a small blueprint-stratified sample of unseen, exam-format questions under timed conditions — around 20 to 30 items spread across the eight types and the seven domains. Record first-attempt accuracy by type and domain and your pace. This is your true starting line, and it must come from an exam-format source, not from finals SBAs, because SBAs cannot exercise calculation, prescription review or the prescribing write-up. Do not review the answers to these baseline items in a way that memorises them; note the category of each error and move on, so the items remain partly reusable as trend checks later.
First pass: set domain and format floors
Now open PassMedicine for its real job, consolidating therapeutics knowledge, and run a first pass of first-attempt SBAs. The single rule that makes this safe is to set floors the algorithm cannot hide. A rising overall score will otherwise mask whole unattempted areas, because spaced repetition keeps feeding you the familiar. Commit to a minimum number of first-attempt items in each of the lower-volume prescribing domains — obstetric, paediatric and psychiatric — and to a daily quantum of the formats PassMedicine cannot serve well, taken from your exam-format bank: calculation skills, prescription review and drug monitoring. Log first-attempt accuracy only. Repeat accuracy will climb on its own and means little.
Error taxonomy: name the mistake before you fix it
Not every wrong answer deserves the same response, so classify each error the moment you make it. Six categories cover almost everything on the PSA.
- Knowledge gap: you did not know the therapeutic fact. Fix with a short source read and a spaced follow-up.
- Misread stem: the information was there and you missed it. Fix with a stem-marking habit, not more content.
- Premature closure: you committed to the first plausible drug without checking contraindications, interactions or the whole chart. Fix with a deliberate review step.
- Guideline error: your choice conflicted with current NICE or CKS guidance. Fix by re-reading the specific guideline, not the whole topic.
- Calculation error: an arithmetic or unit slip. Fix with daily calculation drills; this is the most dangerous category because it is fail-shaped.
- Time-pressure error: you knew it but ran out of time. Fix with pacing practice at full PSA speed, not with more untimed drilling.
The taxonomy matters because the correct remedy differs completely by category, and lumping them together as "got it wrong" wastes revision time.
Review interval: match the fix to the error
Once an error is classified, decide its follow-up rather than reflexively re-doing the same question. A knowledge gap earns a fresh transfer question on the same concept a few days later, so you test recall of the principle, not memory of one stem. A misread or time-pressure error earns a timed mixed block, because the problem is process, not content. A guideline error earns a short, targeted source read against the SmPC/eMC, NICE or CKS, then a spaced check. Only genuinely novel, high-yield facts earn an immediate spaced-repetition card. Crucially, avoid the temptation to satisfy yourself by re-answering an item you now remember; that produces recognition memory and inflates repeat accuracy without building the transferable judgement the PSA rewards. This discipline is the core of the Q-bank percentage caveat.
Mixed-block switch: stop filtering, start simulating
Topic-filtered practice is right early, when you are building knowledge domain by domain. It becomes a liability later, because the real exam is mixed and un-filtered. Switch when two things are true: your first-attempt accuracy on filtered blocks has plateaued, and your blueprint matrix shows no red cells for volume. From that point, shift the balance towards timed random blocks that interleave all eight question types at roughly two minutes an item. PassMedicine can supply the knowledge-SBA portion of these, but the calculation, review and write-up portions must come from an exam-format bank, so your mixed blocks are genuinely representative rather than SBA-only.
Exit criteria: how you know you are done
You are ready to stop grinding when a set of measurable conditions all hold, not when the bank is complete. Coverage floor: every question type and every domain practised at volume, evidenced by your matrix. Stable first-attempt performance: consistent accuracy on unseen mixed blocks over several days, not one good session. Pacing: you finish 60 mixed items inside two hours with time to check calculations. Retention: concepts you fixed weeks ago still hold on spaced re-tests. And calibration: you have run at least one official practice paper late, under exam conditions, and it broadly agreed with your unseen bank performance. Bank completion is not on this list, because you can finish 11,000 SBAs and still be unpractised at writing a safe prescription.
Worked example: a seven-day plan
One job for PassMedicine, one job for iatroX, and no claims about any platform's internal algorithm.
| Day | PassMedicine (job: consolidate knowledge) | iatroX (job: unseen exam-format transfer and measurement) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 30 first-attempt therapeutics SBAs | Blueprint-stratified 20-item baseline, timed |
| 2 | 30 SBAs on a weak domain; classify errors | 15 calculation-skills items |
| 3 | Spaced-repetition review of fixed gaps | 15 prescription-review charts, timed |
| 4 | 30 SBAs, ADRs and drug-monitoring focus | 20 mixed items at PSA pace |
| 5 | Light reading against NICE and CKS | 15 data-interpretation and monitoring items |
| 6 | Consolidate notes; no new SBAs | 30-item mixed block, full two-minute pace |
| 7 | Rest | Re-audit trend; run an official practice paper if near the exam |
Notice how little of your unseen exam-format stock is spent each day, and how the finals SBAs carry the high-volume knowledge load. That is the whole design: spend the plentiful resource freely, ration the scarce one.
Decision checklist
Continue if PassMedicine is doing its knowledge job and you are treating readiness as a separate, unseen measurement. Supplement — usually the right call — by adding exam-format prescribing, calculation and review practice the SBA bank cannot provide. Switch your primary practice to an exam-format bank if finals SBAs are crowding out format-specific work. Stop grinding only when the exit criteria above are met and an official practice paper has calibrated you.
Bottom line
PassMedicine earns a place in a PSA plan as a knowledge-consolidation tool, and the workflow above lets you use it hard without being misled by it. Set floors so no domain hides, classify every error so the fix matches the fault, verify against the SmPC/eMC rather than a memorised figure, and above all preserve a stock of unseen, exam-format questions as your only honest readiness signal. Spend the SBAs freely; spend the unseen items like currency.
FAQ
Is PassMedicine enough for the PSA on its own? No. It has no dedicated PSA bank, and its single-best-answer format cannot reproduce the prescribing write-up, calculation-skills, prescription-review or data-interpretation tasks the exam is built around. It is a strong therapeutics-knowledge resource, so use it for that and pair it with exam-format practice and the official practice papers.
Which PSA component does PassMedicine not reproduce well? Prescribing and Calculation Skills are the weakest fit, because writing a complete, safe prescription and performing multi-step calculations under time pressure are procedural tasks an SBA cannot recreate. Prescription Review and Data Interpretation are only partly served. Plan to drill all of these in an exam-format resource.
How many PassMedicine questions should I complete per day for the PSA? Aim for quality over volume: roughly 20 to 40 first-attempt SBAs for knowledge, plus a smaller ration of exam-format prescribing and calculation items for transfer. Track first-attempt accuracy and full error review rather than total completion, because repeat accuracy rises fast and tells you little about readiness.
When should I stop using PassMedicine and move to mixed mocks? Switch the balance towards timed mixed blocks once your filtered first-attempt accuracy has plateaued and your blueprint matrix has no under-practised areas. Continuing to drill filtered SBAs past that point tends to build recognition memory rather than the mixed, time-pressured judgement the PSA actually tests.
How should I combine PassMedicine with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each a single job: PassMedicine consolidates knowledge, and iatroX supplies unseen, timed, exam-format blocks you never pre-read, keeping it a clean measurement layer. This division follows the two-Q-bank rule and protects the only questions that can give you a true readiness signal.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 19 July 2026. Vendor-reported and third-party-reported figures are labelled and change without notice; verify the current question count, access period, price and features on the product page. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing question bank; here its role is confined to unseen, exam-format measurement — the job PassMedicine's finals product does not claim — not to the therapeutics teaching PassMedicine does well. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: the official PSA information at prescribingsafetyassessment.ac.uk; the PassMedicine product pages; and the iatroX guides on reading a Q-bank percentage and blueprint coverage. Compare tools on the iatroX comparison hub and the PSA landing page.