Lead with the honest finding, because it changes the whole question: as of 21 July 2026, Licence Medical does not publish an SCE Dermatology question bank. Its catalogue covers other specialties, but dermatology is not among them, so there is no Licence Medical dermatology product to audit for domain coverage, cognitive level or blind spots. If you searched for one, this article tells you what does exist, points you to a genuine SCE Dermatology specialist, and gives you a method to audit whichever bank you choose.
None of this means your search was wasted. The intent behind "what Licence Medical tests for SCE Dermatology" is a sound one — you want to know whether a specific, affordable bank will cover the exam — and the answer, that this particular provider does not cover dermatology, is exactly the information that stops you buying the wrong thing. The rest of the article makes that time productive by showing what a dermatology bank must contain and how to check it.
What Licence Medical actually offers, and what to use instead
| Field | Detail (last checked 21 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Provider | Licence Medical (license-medical.com), an independent SCE preparation provider |
| Dermatology SCE bank? | No — not offered. Its specialty list is ESENeph, Gastroenterology, Rheumatology, Endocrinology & Diabetes, Acute Medicine, Respiratory Medicine, Medical Oncology, Palliative Medicine, Neurology, and MRCP Part 1 and 2 |
| Genuine SCE Dermatology specialist | StudyPRN (vendor-reported: 772 practice questions, one 100-question mock, from £209, across 16 sub-specialty areas including dermatopathology, dermoscopy, skin oncology and skin surgery) |
| Important caveat | BMJ OnExamination does not publish an SCE Dermatology bank (verified 21 July 2026), so do not rely on it for this exam — it covers other specialties including SCE Acute Medicine |
| Verify | Confirm all figures and current coverage on the providers' own pages before purchase |
This is not a criticism of Licence Medical, which is a legitimate provider in the specialties it does cover. It is simply an accurate coverage finding: for SCE Dermatology you need a resource built for it. StudyPRN is the clearest specialist match at the last-checked date; verify its live figures on studyprn.com. Because the market is thinner for dermatology than for the larger medical SCEs, choosing carefully matters more, not less.
It also pays to understand why the dermatology SCE market is thinner than, say, acute medicine or nephrology. Dermatology is a small specialty with a heavily visual blueprint, which makes a good bank expensive to build: licensed clinical photographs, dermoscopy and histopathology all cost more to source and keep current than text stems. That is precisely why some general providers skip it, and why the resources that do specialise are worth paying for. When you evaluate a dermatology bank you are partly paying for image quality and currency, not just question count, so weight those in your decision.
The exam you are actually sitting
The SCE in Dermatology is the standard Specialty Certificate Examination: two papers of 100 best-of-five questions — 200 in total — each three hours, one day, computer-based on Surpass, one mark per correct answer, no negative marking. Only the blueprint differs between specialties. The indicative Dermatology distribution (updated 2023) is below.
| Blueprint domain | Indicative questions (of 200) |
|---|---|
| General dermatology and primary care | 48 |
| Paediatric dermatology and genetics | 30 |
| Skin oncology | 18 |
| Skin biology and research | 14 |
| Cutaneous allergy | 10 |
| Dermatopathology | 10 |
| Dressings and wound care | 10 |
| Formulation and systemic therapy | 10 |
| Genito-urinary and oral medicine | 10 |
| Infectious disease | 10 |
| Skin surgery and cosmetic | 10 |
| Photodermatology | 8 |
| Dermoscopy | 4 |
| Psychodermatology | 4 |
| Skin of colour | 4 |
How to audit any dermatology SCE bank you choose
Since there is no Licence Medical product to review, apply this audit to StudyPRN or whichever bank you adopt. It is the same discipline you would use for any resource.
Domain coverage. Map the bank's topic tags onto the fifteen official domains and count questions per domain. Compare against the weight column. General dermatology and paediatric/genetics together are almost 40% of the paper and should dominate the bank; the small-count domains — dermoscopy, photodermatology, psychodermatology, skin of colour — should still be present, because their absence is the most common silent gap.
Cognitive level. Sample a stratified set and grade recall versus application, stem realism, distractor plausibility, and the proportion of items that require reading an image rather than a sentence. Dermatology is image-heavy, so a bank that is mostly text stems under-prepares you regardless of its total.
Common blind spots. In dermatology specifically, audit hardest for skin of colour (different morphology on pigmented skin), dermatopathology (reading a photomicrograph), dermoscopy (pattern recognition), paediatric genodermatoses, psychodermatology, dermatological emergencies, and systemic therapeutics with current monitoring rules. These are the cells self-selected practice leaves empty.
One more axis is worth grading explicitly: image quality and licensing. A dermatology bank lives or dies on its pictures. Check that clinical photographs are clear at exam resolution, that dermoscopic and histopathological images are genuine and labelled, and that the same handful of images is not recycled across many questions. A bank with a large question count but a small image library will train you to recognise its pictures rather than the diseases, and that recognition does not transfer to the exam's fresh photographs.
Sample question style, jurisdiction and recency
Grade a stratified sample on stem length, option plausibility, image quality and management sequencing, and check a subset against current UK guidance — NICE, BAD guidelines, and the SmPC or eMC for drug facts (never a medicines shortcut) — recording your review date. Dermatology therapeutics move quickly; biologic indications, melanoma management and isotretinoin governance are the topics most likely to have shifted since a bank was written, so date them explicitly.
Record your review as a date and a jurisdiction against each sampled topic, so that if you return to the bank in a month you know what you have already validated. This matters more for a resource you are trusting relatively sight-unseen: the less independent detail a provider publishes, the more of the verification burden falls on you, and a dated log is how you keep that burden manageable rather than repeating the same checks.
Format gap, duplication and contamination
State it plainly: a best-of-five bank cannot fully train morphology reading, dermoscopy or the interpretation of rapidly changing therapeutics — it can rehearse the knowledge, but exam-resolution image speed and pattern recognition need dedicated image practice, and drug facts need checking against primary sources. Watch, too, for repeated concepts and near-duplicate stems in any single bank: rising accuracy that reflects recognition of specific images rather than mastery. The tell is a score that climbs on the bank but stalls on unseen questions elsewhere; bank completion is a milestone, not coverage.
Reading your audit: three signals that should change your plan
Once you have graded a bank on coverage, cognitive level and images, three findings should change what you do. If coverage is uneven — rich in general dermatology, thin in the small-count domains — keep the bank but plan separate practice for the gaps rather than assuming it will fill them. If the cognitive level is low, with too many single-fact recall items and too few image-based application questions, treat the bank as a foundation tool and add harder, image-led practice on top. And if a sample is out of date against current UK guidance on therapeutics, downgrade it from a primary resource to a supplement, because stale drug content is the error most likely to cost you high-confidence marks. None of these signals is visible in the headline question count; all of them come out of the audit.
Best-fit matrix
| Use case | Recommended resource |
|---|---|
| Primary SCE Dermatology bank | A genuine specialist bank (for example StudyPRN — vendor-reported) — not Licence Medical, which has no dermatology product |
| Second bank / extra unseen volume | A different specialist source, or unseen cross-specialty blocks |
| Image and morphology practice | British Association of Dermatologists resources and e-LfH |
| Therapeutics and monitoring | SmPC/eMC and NICE guidance |
| Unseen measurement and spaced retrieval | iatroX (cross-specialty knowledge layer, not a dermatology-specific bank) |
A seven-day plan for a busy clinic week
Take Meera, a dermatology ST5 six weeks out. Because Licence Medical has no dermatology bank, her specialist coverage comes from a dedicated SCE Dermatology bank (she uses StudyPRN), and iatroX provides adaptive transfer practice — unseen mixed-topic timed blocks and spaced re-surfacing of misses, with no proprietary-algorithm claim.
- Day 1: Specialist bank, 30 questions in a weak domain (dermatopathology); explanations read.
- Day 2: iatroX 25-item unseen mixed block, timed; code errors by domain and by knowledge-versus-image type.
- Day 3 (busy clinic): Read one BAD guideline linked to a Day 2 miss; no formal questions.
- Day 4: Specialist bank, 30 questions across two small-count domains (dermoscopy, skin of colour).
- Day 5: iatroX 30-item mixed block; compare first-attempt accuracy with Day 2.
- Day 6: Review specialist-bank explanations for missed items only.
- Day 7: iatroX spaced re-test of the week's misses, blind.
The division of labour is the same one that works for every SCE: the specialist bank drives structured, image-rich coverage, and the unseen cross-specialty layer checks that coverage has become transferable rather than item-specific. Because Licence Medical contributes nothing to the dermatology side, Meera's stack simply routes around it — a reminder that the right resource list is built backwards from the exam's needs, not forwards from a familiar brand name.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Do not start with Licence Medical for dermatology — it has no product for this exam.
- Continue with your chosen specialist bank if per-domain coverage is even and unseen accuracy is rising.
- Supplement with image and therapeutics practice where the bank is thin.
- Switch if a sample is out of date against current UK guidance.
- Stop new questions when coverage is complete and high-confidence image errors are near zero.
Frequently asked questions
Is Licence Medical enough for SCE Dermatology on its own? No — Licence Medical does not currently offer an SCE Dermatology bank at all, so it cannot be your dermatology resource, let alone a sufficient one. For this exam you need a dedicated dermatology bank such as StudyPRN (vendor-reported figures above); Licence Medical would only be relevant if you were also revising one of the other specialties it does cover.
Which SCE Dermatology component does Licence Medical not reproduce well? Because there is no Licence Medical dermatology product, it reproduces none of the components — general dermatology, image interpretation, dermatopathology, dermoscopy or therapeutics. The honest answer is to point you to a specialist bank for all of them, and to note that even a strong best-of-five bank cannot fully train exam-resolution image reading, which needs dedicated image practice.
How many Licence Medical questions should I complete per day for SCE Dermatology? None, because there are none to complete; Licence Medical publishes no dermatology questions. If you use a specialist dermatology bank instead, a sustainable target is roughly 30 to 50 questions a day, each reviewed and coded by domain and by whether the error was knowledge or image recognition.
When should I stop using Licence Medical and move to mixed mocks? The question does not apply to dermatology, since you would not be using Licence Medical for it. With your chosen specialist bank, move to mixed, timed, full-length mocks in the final three to four weeks once coverage is even, keeping guideline and image resources to close the specific gaps the mocks reveal.
How should I combine Licence Medical with iatroX without duplicating practice? For dermatology there is nothing from Licence Medical to combine, so pair a specialist dermatology bank with iatroX: the specialist bank gives structured domain coverage, and iatroX provides unseen cross-specialty measurement and spaced retrieval. Because iatroX is not a dermatology-specific SCE bank, it will not duplicate the specialist bank's items; it keeps your measurement clean and re-surfaces your coded misses.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. Coverage finding: Licence Medical's published specialty list did not include Dermatology at the last-checked date; verify on license-medical.com. Vendor-reported figures (StudyPRN) are labelled as such and should be confirmed on studyprn.com; BMJ OnExamination was verified as not offering an SCE Dermatology bank at the last-checked date. Disclosure: iatroX operates a competing UK question bank; its role here is confined to cross-specialty unseen measurement and spaced retrieval, and it is not a specialty-specific SCE Dermatology bank. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com. References: the Federation SCE Dermatology page; license-medical.com; studyprn.com; the exam-level hub, The SCE Dermatology Q-Bank Content-Gap Checklist; and the iatroX comparison hub.