This workflow is for Italian medical graduates who have bought into Peer4Med's course, video library and manuals and want to stop that content leaking away as passive viewing. It addresses the Concorso SSM's only scored component — the 140-item multiple-choice test — by converting lectures and notes into weekly retrieval. The principal limitation to accept up front is that watching, however well produced, is recognition; only testing on unseen items measures what you will actually recall under time.
What Peer4Med offers for Concorso SSM right now
The figures below are vendor-reported from peer4med.it and last checked on 20 July 2026. Peer4Med is primarily a course-and-materials provider with a bundled simulator, so treat the counts as marketing claims and confirm the current inclusions and prices on the product page before you commit.
| Item | Vendor-reported detail (20 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Platform type | Course + manuals + simulator: video library, live and recorded courses, printed/PDF manuals, and a quiz simulator |
| Video library | Vendor-reported 140 hours indexed across roughly 400 videos |
| Manuals | A 10-volume Medicine and Surgery SSM manual, plus additional SSM manuals depending on tier |
| Question practice | Free tier with about 600 quiz; paid access to "unlimited" custom exercises; 20 original mock exams (inedite) plus 9 past official papers |
| Interface | Simulator stated to mirror the ministerial exam platform |
| Adaptive/AI | None described |
| Access/price | Tiered courses (Basic, Plus, Advanced, Premium) with instalment plans and a "pay if you pass" option; prices vary by tier and were not fully listed — verify on peer4med.it |
| Concorso SSM scope | The 140-MCQ written test; the specialty concorso, not TOLC-MED admission |
The shape of the product matters for the workflow: Peer4Med's centre of gravity is instruction — videos, live sessions and manuals — with practice attached, rather than a bank-first tool. That is a strength for building understanding and a risk for exam readiness, because instruction is the most seductive form of passive study.
The exam behind the workflow
The Concorso SSM is a national, computer-based paper of 140 single-best-answer questions with five options each, completed in 210 minutes. Marking is +1 for a correct answer, −0.25 for a wrong one and 0 for a blank; the test contributes up to 140 points and the titoli — degree mark, examination average, an experimental thesis and any research doctorate — add up to 7 more, for a maximum of 147. A single national graduatoria then allocates specialties and seats. Because the ministry does not publish a live question bank, only past official papers, no course can rehearse this year's exact items; and because your placement is relative to everyone else sitting, the aim is durable recall you can deploy at roughly 90 seconds per question, not a memorised set of familiar stems.
Prime before you press play: a diagnostic set per module
Before you open a module, answer a short diagnostic set on its topic. Six to ten questions is enough to expose what you already know and, more importantly, to create a reason to watch: you are now looking for specific answers rather than letting a video wash over you. The misses from that diagnostic become your viewing agenda, so you skim what you have and attend closely to what you do not.
Watch in bounded segments, then recall before you check
Watch or read in bounded segments — a single indexed video, or one manual section — then close the resource and produce a concise free recall before you look back. Write the three or four load-bearing facts, the decision rule and the common trap from memory. The act of retrieving before checking is what converts exposure into a memory you can find under exam pressure; re-watching until it "feels familiar" does the opposite, because familiarity is exactly what the exam does not reward.
Turn each objective into three prompts
For every learning objective, generate three prompts you can test later: one discrimination question (which diagnosis or drug, given competing options), one management rule (the single next step, threshold or first-line choice), and one "why not the alternative?" prompt that forces you to say why the nearest wrong answer is wrong. Three tight prompts per objective are worth more than a page of highlighted notes, because they are already in the currency the exam trades in — single-best-answer decisions among plausible distractors.
Test on fresh items at 24–48 hours, then again after a gap
Test the material with fresh questions within 24 to 48 hours, and again after a longer interval of several days. Crucially, do not replay the lecture as your revision: re-watching is recognition dressed up as study. Use Peer4Med's custom exercises for the near-term test and a genuinely unseen source for the spaced one, so that on the second pass you are recalling the medicine rather than remembering the video in which you first met it.
Build a weekly mixed block
Assemble a weekly mixed, timed block that ignores the order in which you studied, so the sequence of the course never becomes a cue for the answer. When cardiology follows the cardiology module, you cannot tell whether you know the content or merely know what week it is. A random, cross-domain block under the clock removes that crutch and gives you the first honest read on whether the week's teaching has actually stuck.
Exit the course on performance, not completion
Leave a module when your objective, exam-format performance on its topic improves — not when the progress bar reaches 100 per cent. Completion percentage is a vanity metric, as "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score" explains; a fully watched library and a strong unseen score are different achievements. Keep the manuals as a reference to answer specific misses, but stop paying the time cost of instruction once retrieval, not exposure, is where the marginal gains sit.
A seven-day worked example
This template assumes a graduate mid-preparation and can be repeated. It uses Peer4Med for one defined job — instruction and near-term drilling — and iatroX's Concorso SSM bank to measure transfer on unseen items, with no claim to any proprietary algorithm.
- Day 1 — Diagnostic sets across two upcoming modules; note the misses as your viewing agenda.
- Day 2 — Watch those modules in bounded segments; free-recall after each; draft three prompts per objective.
- Day 3 — Test the prompts as Peer4Med custom exercises; log misses by cause, not just by topic.
- Day 4 — Read the manual only for the confirmed knowledge gaps; rebuild the prompts you failed.
- Day 5 — Sit a fresh, timed unseen iatroX Concorso SSM block; because these are not Peer4Med items, the result measures transfer rather than memory of the lecture.
- Day 6 — Take one Peer4Med mock (original or official) under exam timing and negative marking; classify errors.
- Day 7 — Re-test the spaced prompts from earlier in the week; rest the material that is now stable.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
Continue with Peer4Med while its instruction is closing real knowledge gaps and your converted retrieval sets are improving. Supplement it with an unseen measurement bank as soon as your practice risks becoming a replay of familiar mocks. Switch the balance towards timed mixed mocks when your topic scores are high but you have not tested them under random conditions. Stop watching a module once its objectives are stable on unseen items, regardless of how much library remains. Weigh any change on the iatroX comparison hub against measurable gaps rather than the sunk cost of a course you have already bought.
Frequently asked questions
Is Peer4Med enough for Concorso SSM on its own? Peer4Med can supply the instruction and a credible bank of practice, including original mocks and past official papers, so as a content source it is a reasonable core for many candidates. Whether it is "enough" depends on what you do with it: a 140-hour video library consumed passively will not move an exam that rewards fast, unaided recall. It becomes enough only when you convert its lectures into retrieval and confirm the result on unseen items; treated as a watch-list, it will flatter your sense of readiness.
Which Concorso SSM component does Peer4Med not reproduce well? The exam has no oral or practical station, so the missing piece is not a clinical simulation. Peer4Med's weaker area is exam-condition retrieval of genuinely unseen material: re-watching indexed videos is recognition, not recall, and its 20 original mocks plus 9 official papers are finite, so they stop being unseen after the first honest attempt. Like any platform, it also cannot touch the titoli points or the national graduatoria, which are set by your academic record and the cohort, not by your course.
How many Peer4Med questions should I complete per day for Concorso SSM? The useful target is not a raw count but a reviewed one: roughly 40–80 items a day that you review to the point of explaining every distractor is a sustainable band for most candidates, and it beats several hundred skimmed. Pair each study block with retrieval rather than more watching, and remember the caution in the percentage article that unreviewed volume inflates confidence without moving competence.
When should I stop using Peer4Med and move to mixed mocks? Stop treating the course as the main activity once your converted retrieval sets are stable and your topic scores are high; that is the signal to shift the weight to full, timed, mixed 140-item mocks under negative marking. Keep the manuals as a reference to resolve specific misses, but a candidate who is still working through videos in the final stretch, rather than sitting mixed mocks and reviewing errors, has the ratio wrong.
How should I combine Peer4Med with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each a separate job under the two-bank rule: Peer4Med teaches and drills, iatroX measures on unseen items you have not worked before. Do not re-answer Peer4Med mocks in iatroX or the reverse; the value of the second bank is precisely that it is unfamiliar. Run a timed iatroX Concorso SSM block after a study week to check the week's content transfers, and note that iatroX's core is English-language, so it tests the underlying medicine rather than Italian item wording.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 20 July 2026; Peer4Med figures — video hours, manual volumes, question and mock counts, tiers and prices — are vendor-reported from peer4med.it on that date and should be confirmed on the product page, as inclusions change each cycle. Disclosure: iatroX operates its own Concorso SSM question bank and therefore competes with Peer4Med; this article confines iatroX to the unseen-measurement role that a course provider does not claim to fill. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca — portale Scuole di Specializzazione in Medicina and the annual bando/decreto (official format, scoring and titoli); Peer4Med course, simulator and manual pages (peer4med.it, vendor-reported); the iatroX Concorso SSM landing page; "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score"; and the iatroX blueprint-coverage matrix pillar.