This is for the busy GP trainee or SAS doctor who has booked a DRCOG revision course and wants it to translate into marks rather than a comfortable weekend of listening. A course addresses the knowledge component of the DRCOG — the single 120-question SBA paper — and it does that well when the teaching is examiner-informed. Its principal limitation is structural: a course delivers explanation, but exams reward retrieval, and watching is not retrieving. The schedule below closes that gap.
The honest finding first: a course is teaching, not a question bank
Lead with this because it changes how you use the product. DRCOG revision courses — including the RCOG's own Official DRCOG Online Revision Course — are teaching products. The official course, for example, is delivered by DRCOG examiners over two half-days with on-demand access afterwards, and it includes a modest set of practice questions (the RCOG describes roughly forty single-best-answer questions to complete before the course, with more discussed during teaching). That examiner-authored teaching is high-value calibration. But a few dozen questions is not the unseen volume you need to prove readiness, and passive viewing on its own reliably produces the "I understood everything and remember nothing" effect. A course is where you learn the model; a bank is where you test whether the model survives contact with an unseen stem.
Current-state box: DRCOG revision courses
Figures are vendor-reported and last checked on 20 July 2026; confirm current dates and fees on the provider's page before booking.
| Attribute | DRCOG revision courses (vendor-reported, 20 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Format | Live or on-demand lectures across the DRCOG curriculum; the official RCOG course runs over two half-days with on-demand replay |
| Typical question volume | Small and illustrative — the RCOG course cites about 40 pre-course SBAs plus items discussed in teaching; courses are not question banks |
| Access period | On-demand replay commonly time-limited (the RCOG course states around six months) |
| Adaptive/AI features | None claimed; these are taught courses, not adaptive software |
| Price | Varies by provider; the RCOG course advertises early-bird rates — verify current fees on the booking page |
| DRCOG components supported | Knowledge for the SBA paper; DRCOG has no separate clinical or oral component |
Exam anchor: what you are preparing for
The DRCOG is one computer-based paper of 120 single best answer questions in three hours, each worth two marks (240 total), standard-set by modified Angoff to the level of a competent GP trainee, currently SBA-only. The syllabus spans seven RCOG modules from fertility regulation and sexual health through pregnancy and the peripartum period to urgent and non-urgent gynaecology. The official reference is the RCOG DRCOG syllabus and the RCOG's own sample questions; a course's running order is one teacher's route through that syllabus, not the blueprint itself. Keep the syllabus open beside the course so you can tick coverage against the primary source rather than assuming the course covered everything.
Before each module: prime with a short diagnostic
Do not start a lecture cold. Before each module, answer a short diagnostic set — five to ten questions on the topic — so you expose what you already know and create a reason to watch. The misses become the questions you are listening to answer. This "test before you teach" step is one of the most robust findings in learning science: attempting retrieval before instruction improves what the instruction then sticks. It costs ten minutes and changes the lecture from a monologue into a search for specific answers.
Watch or read in bounded segments, then recall
Watch in bounded segments — a single learning objective or fifteen to twenty minutes — then stop, close the resource, and produce a concise free recall from memory before you check your notes. Write three or four bullet points of what mattered: the decision rule, the threshold, the exception. Only then reopen the notes to correct and complete. The act of pulling the content out of memory, and the small discomfort of the gaps you find, is what converts viewing into durable knowledge. If you take notes at all, take them after the recall, not during the watching.
Convert each objective into three prompts
For every learning objective the course delivers, write three prompts you can test yourself on later:
- One discrimination question — a stem where the answer turns on telling this condition or management from its nearest neighbour.
- One management rule — the single next best action in the common presentation.
- One "why not the alternative?" prompt — the reason the plausible wrong option is wrong.
Three prompts per objective builds a personal retrieval set that mirrors how SBAs actually test. It also forces you to articulate the discriminators, which is where marks are won and lost on a best-of-five paper.
Test with fresh questions within 24–48 hours, and again later
Within 24 to 48 hours of a module, test the material with fresh questions — not the course's own examples, which you have now seen, but unseen items on the same principle. Then test again after a longer interval of a week or more. Two things matter here. First, do not replay the lecture as revision; re-watching feels productive and mostly is not. Second, use genuinely unseen items so the score reflects transfer rather than recognition of the course's examples. This is where an external bank earns its place: the course gives you the model, the unseen questions tell you whether it holds.
Build a weekly mixed block
Once a week, assemble a mixed block that ignores the course's running order. Courses teach in tidy topic sequence, and that order quietly becomes a cue — you answer correctly partly because you know today's lecture was on ectopic pregnancy. A mixed block across all seven modules removes the cue and tests whether you can recognise the topic from the stem alone, which is the only thing the real paper asks. Time it at roughly ninety seconds per question so pace is trained alongside knowledge.
Exit the course when performance improves, not when it ends
The exit criterion is objective exam-format performance, not the completion bar. When your unseen, timed, mixed-block accuracy in a topic has risen and held, you have extracted what the course had to offer on that topic; move on even if there is more footage to watch. Completion percentage measures consumption, not competence. A course you have "finished" but cannot retrieve under timed conditions is unfinished in the only sense that counts.
Worked example: a seven-day plan
A full-time GP trainee with a DRCOG date eight weeks away, using the official RCOG course on demand and iatroX for unseen transfer practice. The course does one job (structured teaching and calibration); iatroX does a different one (fresh, unseen measurement). No proprietary-algorithm claims are made about either.
- Day 1 (Mon): 8-item diagnostic on early pregnancy, then watch the early-pregnancy module in two segments with a free recall after each.
- Day 2 (Tue): write three prompts per objective from Monday; 15-item unseen iatroX block on early pregnancy, timed. Log misses.
- Day 3 (Wed): diagnostic + watch the contraception/sexual-health module; free recall.
- Day 4 (Thu): rest or review Tuesday's error log only.
- Day 5 (Fri): 20-item unseen iatroX block mixing Monday's and Wednesday's topics — the first retest interval.
- Day 6 (Sat): 30-item weekly mixed block across all modules covered so far, timed at 90 seconds per item.
- Day 7 (Sun): review; any topic whose unseen accuracy has not moved goes back into next week's diagnostic.
The rhythm is deliberate: watch once, recall immediately, test soon, retest later, mix weekly. The course is never replayed as revision; retrieval does the consolidating.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue the course while new modules still lift your unseen scores.
- Supplement with an unseen bank from day one — the course's own questions are too few to measure readiness.
- Switch your weekly emphasis to timed mixed blocks once most modules clear your floor and pace becomes the limiting factor.
- Stop re-watching any module whose unseen, timed accuracy has already risen and held; further viewing is comfort, not gain.
Decide on the measured gap, not on how much course content remains or on the fee already paid.
FAQ
Is DRCOG Revision Courses enough for DRCOG on its own? A revision course is a strong teaching input but not sufficient on its own, because it delivers explanation and only a small set of practice questions, whereas the exam rewards retrieval on unseen items; used with an external question source for testing, a good course is an efficient way to build the model, but the course alone cannot prove you can apply it under timed conditions.
Which DRCOG component does DRCOG Revision Courses not reproduce well? It does not reproduce sustained, unseen, timed assessment — the closest analogue to sitting the paper — because courses carry only illustrative question volume; the teaching reproduces the knowledge and the examiners' framing well, but the experience of discriminating between five plausible options at pace, on items you have never seen, has to come from a bank.
How many DRCOG Revision Courses questions should I complete per day for DRCOG? The course's own questions are few and are best used once, as priming and in-session discussion rather than as daily volume; your daily question count should come from an external unseen bank, where a sustainable figure for a working trainee is one 20 to 40-item block on most days, with every miss reviewed properly rather than skimmed. Vendor question figures cited here are vendor-reported as of 20 July 2026 and should be verified on the provider's page.
When should I stop using DRCOG Revision Courses and move to mixed mocks? Move to mixed timed mocks once most modules clear your personal floor on unseen questions and your limiting factor has shifted from missing knowledge to pace and stamina; at that stage re-watching lectures gives diminishing returns, and full-length mixed blocks are the higher-yield use of your remaining weeks.
How should I combine DRCOG Revision Courses with iatroX without duplicating practice? Keep the jobs separate: let the course teach the model and let iatroX supply fresh, unseen items that test the same principle, so you never simply re-answer a question you saw in the lecture. Test within 24 to 48 hours of watching, retest after a week, and reserve a protected pool of iatroX items you have not reviewed so that a clean unseen mock is always available.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 20 July 2026. Course details (format, dates, question volume and fees) are vendor-reported from the RCOG and other course providers as of that date and change between diets, so verify them on the booking page before you rely on them. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing UK question bank; in this workflow it appears only as the unseen-measurement layer that a taught course does not provide, and it does not replace the teaching itself. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: RCOG, Official DRCOG Online Revision Course (rcog.org.uk); RCOG, DRCOG syllabus and format (rcog.org.uk); iatroX, "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score" (https://www.iatrox.com/blog/qbank-percentage-not-your-exam-score); iatroX DRCOG content-gap checklist (https://www.iatrox.com/blog/the-drcog-q-bank-content-gap-checklist-what-to-verify-before-you-stop-doing-new-questions); iatroX comparison hub (https://www.iatrox.com/compare).