This is for ST3 GP trainees revising the MRCGP SCA around clinical work who want a repeatable loop, not another product ranking. FourteenFish's SCA package is a strong consultation-craft course. Its principal limitation for retention is that video is passive: watching a module feels like progress but rarely survives to the consultation room unless you convert it into active recall. This schedule converts watching into examinable knowledge, and is explicit about one thing — neither FourteenFish nor iatroX replaces live consultation practice.
What FourteenFish offers for the SCA right now
The box below reflects FourteenFish's public SCA package, last checked 19 July 2026. Figures are vendor-reported; confirm the live details on the product page.
| Item | Vendor-reported position (19 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Format | A course, not an MCQ bank: video modules covering aspects of the SCA |
| Content | Over 100 clinical updates on common topics; sample consultations with examiner analysis; a Consultation Toolkit; access to the FourteenFish Library |
| Adaptive/AI engine | None advertised |
| Access and price | Around £180 (inc VAT) for 12 months' access; renewal around £50 per year |
| What it is not | It is not a single-best-answer question bank — it does not test underlying factual knowledge with MCQs |
The honest headline: FourteenFish teaches you how to consult, structure a data-gathering phase and impress examiners. It is not designed to drill the underlying clinical knowledge in an MCQ format, and it is not a scored simulator. Those are separate jobs.
The exam you are preparing for
The SCA is an assessment of twelve simulated consultations, each lasting twelve minutes (144 minutes in total), conducted remotely from a local GP surgery, taken from the ST3 year across nine diets a year, with a current fee of £1,207. Examiners judge three domains: Data Gathering and Diagnosis; Clinical Management and Medical Complexity; and Relating to Others. Two of those three domains are consultation skills that only live rehearsal builds — which is why FourteenFish's course is worth including in the stack. The middle domain, Clinical Management, rests on current UK primary-care knowledge (NICE, CKS, and the SmPC/eMC for medicines), and that is the layer a knowledge bank strengthens.
Before each module: a short diagnostic set
Do not open a FourteenFish module cold. First answer three to five questions on the topic — from memory or a knowledge bank — so you expose what you already know and create a reason to watch. If you can already manage the presentation confidently, watch at speed or skip; if the diagnostic exposes a gap, you now watch with a specific question in mind rather than passively. Priming attention like this is the difference between watching and studying.
Watch or read in bounded segments, then recall
Take each module in bounded segments of ten to fifteen minutes. At the end of a segment, close the video and the notes and produce a concise recall — three or four sentences, out loud or written, covering the key discriminators and the management rule. Only then reopen the notes to check. The act of retrieving before checking is what moves the content from recognition to recall; watching to the end and nodding along does not.
Convert each objective into three prompts
For every learning objective in a module, write three prompts you can test later: one discrimination question ("what distinguishes this from its nearest mimic?"), one management rule ("first-line action in this UK primary-care scenario"), and one "why not the alternative?" prompt that forces you to justify rejecting the plausible wrong option. This mirrors how SCA management reasoning is judged and how good MCQ stems are built, and it gives you a reusable test item rather than a passive note.
Test with fresh questions at 24–48 hours, then again
Within 24 to 48 hours, test the material with fresh questions — not a replay of the module. Replaying the lecture is re-exposure, not retrieval, and it inflates your sense of mastery. Use an unseen MCQ block on the same topic to force transfer. Then test again after a longer interval (five to seven days) to catch what has decayed. iatroX is useful here purely as the unseen-question layer: it measures whether the knowledge FourteenFish taught survives into a new stem. It does not, and is not meant to, reproduce the consultation itself.
Build a weekly mixed block
Once a week, sit a mixed block that jumbles the topics you have studied so that course order cannot become a cue for the answer. If you always test hypertension straight after the hypertension module, you are partly remembering the sequence, not the medicine. A mixed, timed block breaks that cue and gives you a cleaner read on what you actually retain under pressure.
Exit the course when performance improves, not when it is "finished"
Completion percentage is not the outcome. Exit or reduce a FourteenFish module when your objective performance on unseen questions for that topic has improved and your consultation rehearsal shows you can deliver the management safely inside twelve minutes. A module can be 100% watched and still not examinable; another can be half-watched and already solid. Let measured performance, not the progress bar, decide where your remaining hours go.
A seven-day schedule for a working trainee
This assumes clinical days with limited evening time, and pairs FourteenFish (consultation craft plus knowledge input) with iatroX (unseen retrieval), without any claim to proprietary algorithms.
- Monday: Diagnostic set on this week's theme (10 min); watch one FourteenFish module in segments with recall (30 min).
- Tuesday: Write the three prompts per objective; rehearse one consultation aloud using the toolkit (25 min).
- Wednesday: iatroX unseen block on Monday's theme — 24–48h transfer test (20 min).
- Thursday: Sample consultation with examiner analysis; note two data-gathering habits to change (30 min).
- Friday: Short source read (NICE/CKS) on the errors iatroX surfaced (20 min).
- Saturday: Weekly mixed timed iatroX block across all themes studied (30 min); record first-attempt accuracy.
- Sunday: Rest or one live consultation rehearsal with a peer — the part no software replaces.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
Continue with FourteenFish while its modules are still changing how you structure consultations and its clinical updates are still filling gaps. Supplement with an unseen MCQ layer as soon as you notice you can recognise management in a video but cannot produce it against a fresh stem — that is the knowledge gap the course is not built to measure. Switch emphasis toward live consultation rehearsal if your bottleneck is data-gathering or rapport rather than knowledge; no video or bank fixes a timing or communication problem. Stop re-watching modules you have already converted into solid recall — re-exposure feels productive and is not.
Three mistakes busy trainees make with a video course
Three failure patterns recur when trainees lean on a consultation course under time pressure. The first is mistaking watched for learned: the progress bar advances, the modules feel familiar, and yet nothing is retrievable in the consultation room because it was never retrieved in revision. The recall step exists precisely to catch this. The second is rehearsing knowledge instead of consultation: it is tempting to keep watching clinical updates because they are comfortable, while avoiding the effortful work of a live twelve-minute consultation with a peer or simulator. Two of the three examiner domains reward that effort, not the watching. The third is letting course order stand in for competence: revising each topic immediately after its module, and testing it in the same order, quietly trains sequence memory rather than transferable recognition. The weekly mixed block and the 24-to-48-hour unseen retest are the two habits that break all three patterns, and they cost less time than re-watching a module you have already absorbed. Build the schedule around them, and the course does its job — teaching consultation craft — without lulling you into false confidence about what you can actually produce under pressure.
Bottom line
FourteenFish is a well-regarded SCA course, and consultation craft is exactly what two of the three examiner domains reward. But video is an input, not a retention method, and it is not a knowledge test. Convert each module into recall, test it on unseen questions within 48 hours, mix your blocks weekly, and keep rehearsing real consultations — the one thing neither the course nor any question bank can do for you.
Frequently asked questions
Is FourteenFish enough for MRCGP SCA on its own? For consultation structure and examiner expectations it is a strong single resource, and many trainees pass having leaned heavily on it. But it is a course, not a knowledge test or a live-practice partner, so on its own it leaves two gaps: measured retrieval of underlying knowledge, and repeated rehearsal with real people. Filling those two gaps is what turns a well-watched course into a pass.
Which MRCGP SCA component does FourteenFish not reproduce well? It reproduces consultation craft and examiner insight well. What no video course reproduces is the live, unscripted pressure of a real twelve-minute consultation with a simulator, and it does not test your underlying knowledge in an examinable MCQ format. Those two components — live rehearsal and measured knowledge — have to come from elsewhere.
How many FourteenFish questions should I complete per day for MRCGP SCA? This is the wrong unit for this product: the SCA package is video and consultation material, not a daily MCQ bank, so there is no per-day question target. Measure your FourteenFish use in modules converted to recall and consultations rehearsed, and keep any daily MCQ count on a separate knowledge bank where a figure of 20 to 40 unseen items is a reasonable transfer test.
When should I stop using FourteenFish and move to mixed mocks? Because FourteenFish is not itself a mock-question bank, "mixed mocks" means unseen MCQ blocks on a separate platform plus full consultation rehearsals. Shift the balance toward those once your consultation structure is stable and your knowledge gaps are narrowing; keep dipping into FourteenFish modules only for the specific topics your mixed testing still flags.
How should I combine FourteenFish with iatroX without duplicating practice? Give each a distinct job: FourteenFish for consultation craft and clinical input, iatroX for unseen retrieval of the underlying knowledge, and live rehearsal for the consultation itself. Because FourteenFish is not an MCQ bank, there is little duplication risk — iatroX simply tests whether what you watched survives into a fresh question, which the course does not measure.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 19 July 2026; vendor figures (contents, price, access) are vendor-reported on that date and may change — verify on the product page. Disclosure: iatroX operates an MRCGP question bank and is positioned here only as the unseen underlying-knowledge and MCQ-measurement layer; it is not a consultation or OSCE simulator and does not replace live SCA practice, which remains essential. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: RCGP, Simulated Consultation Assessment; FourteenFish SCA package; iatroX, Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score and The Two-Q-Bank Rule.