This audit is for a DGM candidate weighing the Munro DGM Question Bank as part of their Part 1 KBA preparation. In short, Munro is a real, low-cost, largely free MCQ resource that is useful for early orientation and cheap volume, but it is small, its explanations and adaptivity are not documented, and it cannot cover the Part 2 OSCE. Use it as a first-pass or supplementary set, not as your sole bank, and measure your readiness on genuinely unseen questions.
Current state of the Munro DGM Question Bank
The Munro DGM Question Bank (from MunroMedics) is a modest, mostly free MCQ resource aimed at the DGM written paper. The figures below are vendor-reported from its site on the date checked and should be re-verified, as the product is migrating to a new address.
| Attribute | Vendor-reported finding (dgmquestionbank.com, 21 July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Product | Munro DGM Question Bank (MunroMedics); site migrating to munromedics.com |
| Free content | 30 free questions plus two mock papers on the site; a further 50 free questions via a linked form |
| Paid content | A 100-question mock exam for £10, arranged by email |
| Access period | Not published — verify with the vendor |
| AI / adaptive features | None stated |
| Explanations / images / timed mode | Not specified on the site — verify before relying on them |
| DGM components | Aimed at the DGM written paper; the OSCE is not reproduced |
The principal limitation is scale and documentation: a bank measured in tens of free questions and a single £10 mock is a helpful supplement, not a comprehensive DGM bank, and features that matter for learning — worked explanations, images, a timed mode — are not stated and should be confirmed before you count on them.
The blueprint you are measuring the bank against
The KBA is 100 best-of-five questions in three hours, online, once yearly, no negative marking, Hofstee-standard-set (RCP, last checked 21 July 2026). The RCP syllabus (February 2025) weights it toward common geriatric syndromes (~40%: frailty, falls and fragility fracture, delirium, dementia and mood, continence, dizziness, pain, nutrition), with other illnesses in older people (~15%), pharmacology and therapeutics (~15%), rehabilitation and CGA (~8%), administrative/ethical/legal aspects (~10%), demographic and social factors (~5%) and the biology of ageing (~2%). The OSCE is four live stations, roughly 1.5 hours, at Liverpool, sat only after the KBA. iatroX, like Munro, covers the KBA knowledge and unseen-MCQ layer only — it is not an OSCE product.
Count the questions, then break the total down by domain
The single most useful discipline with any bank is to stop trusting the headline number and tally coverage by blueprint domain. With Munro, the "count" is small enough that you can almost do this by hand: take the free questions and the mock, and record how many items fall in each domain. The question that matters is not "how many questions are there?" but "how many frailty, falls, delirium, continence, capacity and deprescribing questions are there, and does that distribution mirror the ~40% syndrome weighting?" A small bank can still be usefully balanced — or it can cluster around a few topics and leave whole domains untested. Only the domain breakdown tells you which.
Sample the question style
Characterise a representative set on five features. Recall versus application: does an item ask you to name a fact, or to choose the next best step for an older patient? The KBA leans hard toward application. Stem length: short clinical vignettes with functional and social context, not one-liners. Option plausibility: five options where the distractors are reasonable in an older adult. Image and data interpretation: ECGs, imaging, bloods, continence or falls assessment findings. Management sequencing: questions that test what you do first, second and instead-of. Where a bank skews to recall and single-line stems, it will flatter your percentage while under-preparing you for the paper's actual cognitive demand.
Check jurisdiction and recency on a stratified sample
Pull a stratified sample across domains and check each item against current UK guidance — NICE, CKS, SIGN, BGS best practice, and the SmPC/eMC for medicines detail — and note the date you did it. Geriatric content dates in predictable places: deprescribing and STOPP/START criteria evolve, delirium and falls pathways are updated, and capacity and deprivation-of-liberty guidance shifts. A bank with no visible review date is not disqualified, but you must assume nothing about currency and verify the domains that change fastest. Record your review date so a future you knows how stale the check has become.
The format gap you cannot close with any Q-bank
State this plainly: a standard MCQ bank, Munro or otherwise, cannot prepare you for the parts of DGM that are performed rather than recognised. Frailty recognition and grading, capacity assessment, structured medication review and multidisciplinary discharge planning can all be tested as knowledge in an MCQ, but they are examined as skills in the OSCE. A bank helps you know the right answer; it does not help you elicit a history from a frail patient, communicate a best-interests decision or perform a comprehensive geriatric assessment in front of examiners. Do not let a strong bank percentage stand in for OSCE readiness.
Duplication and contamination
In a small bank the biggest risk is not breadth but repetition. Watch for repeated concepts across the free set and the mock, near-duplicate stems that test the same discrimination twice, and — most importantly — the point at which you are answering from memory of the item rather than from clinical reasoning. When completion becomes recognition, your score rises and your learning stops. A bank of this size will reach that point quickly, which is precisely why it works best as an early or supplementary set rather than the thing you grind in the final weeks.
A worked example: coding one missed item
Suppose you miss a Munro item on an older patient with recurrent falls and postural dizziness where the best answer was to review the antihypertensives and check a lying-and-standing blood pressure, and you chose a vestibular referral instead. Do not simply mark it wrong and move on. Code it three ways. By domain, it belongs to falls and pharmacology, not to ear, nose and throat. By cognitive process, it is a reasoning error: you anchored on the presenting symptom rather than the commonest reversible cause in an older adult, orthostatic hypotension from medicines. By format, the distractor worked because it was clinically plausible, which is exactly how DGM best-of-five options are constructed to catch you. The repair is not to re-read the Munro explanation until you recognise the item; it is to work the underlying concept — structured medication review and orthostatic hypotension, referenced to current NICE and CKS guidance and the SmPC/eMC — and then test it on a fresh, unseen question. One properly coded miss teaches more than twenty items skimmed for the tick.
Best-fit matrix
Decide the one job Munro does best in your sequence.
| Role | Good fit? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation building | Yes | Cheap, low-stakes orientation to DGM-style items |
| First pass | Partial | Fine to start, but too small to be a whole first pass |
| Second bank | Yes | Adds non-overlapping items to a larger primary bank |
| Retake preparation | Weak alone | Retakers need volume and analytics Munro does not document |
| Final simulation | No | Too small and, if reused, contaminated by recognition |
A seven-day worked example
Give Munro the orientation-and-supplement job and iatroX the unseen-measurement job. The adaptivity here is your own error log driving your quotas, not a proprietary algorithm.
- Day 1: Work Munro's free questions; tally them by blueprint domain.
- Day 2: Read up your two weakest domains in BGS resources and current guidance.
- Day 3: Sit a fresh, timed 30-item mixed block in iatroX; do not revisit Munro items.
- Day 4: Code errors by domain and by cause; note any Munro items you now recognise rather than reason through, and retire them.
- Day 5: Repair knowledge-gap errors from guidance, not from the bank you have already seen.
- Day 6: Second unseen timed block; compare weak-domain accuracy with day 3.
- Day 7: Review the error log; plan next week around your two next-weakest domains.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue with Munro as a cheap supplement while its items are still unseen to you.
- Supplement it as a primary bank early — its scale means you will need more unseen volume than it holds.
- Switch your main measurement to a larger bank once you can answer most Munro items from memory.
- Stop using any set for scoring the moment recognition replaces reasoning; that reading is no longer valid.
The bottom line
The Munro DGM Question Bank does an honest, inexpensive job: it introduces DGM-style questions and adds some non-overlapping volume, and at its price that is genuinely worth including in the revision stack. But its scale is small, its explanations and adaptivity are undocumented, and — like every bank — it stops preparing you for anything the day recognition sets in and does nothing for the OSCE. Use it early and as a second source, measure your true readiness on fresh questions, and keep the RCP sample questions as your one-shot calibration.
Frequently asked questions
Is Munro DGM Question Bank enough for DGM on its own? No. It is a useful, low-cost supplement, but on the vendor's own figures it is measured in tens of free questions plus a single 100-item mock, which is too small to cover a blueprint that spans frailty, falls, delirium, continence, pharmacology, rehabilitation, capacity and service structure at exam depth. Use it to orient yourself and to add non-overlapping volume, but pair it with a larger bank for unseen measurement, and do not treat any bank as OSCE preparation.
Which DGM component does Munro DGM Question Bank not reproduce well? The OSCE, entirely, and the KBA's full breadth only partially. Munro aims at the written paper, so it cannot reproduce the four live clinical stations at Liverpool. On the KBA itself, a bank of this size cannot reproduce the blueprint's full domain spread or give you the large, unseen, timed volume the paper's pace rewards, which is why it works best alongside a bigger measurement bank rather than as your only one.
How many Munro DGM Question Bank questions should I complete per day for DGM? Given the bank's size, the more honest framing is how quickly you will exhaust it: at 30 to 50 questions a day you will work through the free set and the mock in a few sessions. Do them in timed, mixed sets rather than untimed and topic-by-topic, log what you get wrong, and once the items become familiar, move your daily quota to a larger bank such as iatroX so you are still answering genuinely unseen questions.
When should I stop using Munro DGM Question Bank and move to mixed mocks? Move as soon as you are recognising Munro's items rather than reasoning through them — with a small bank, that can happen within a week or two of regular use. From that point its score no longer measures readiness, so shift to full-length, timed, mixed mocks in a bank you have not exhausted, and keep the RCP official sample questions sealed for a single, late, one-shot calibration.
How should I combine Munro DGM Question Bank with iatroX without duplicating practice? Use Munro first, for orientation and a cheap first look at DGM-style items, and use iatroX for the ongoing unseen measurement that Munro is too small to sustain. Keep the flow one-directional: when a Munro item exposes a weakness, repair the underlying knowledge from guidance and then test it on fresh iatroX questions, rather than re-answering the Munro item. You avoid duplication by never grinding items you can already recall and by drawing your fresh volume from the larger bank.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. All Munro figures are vendor-reported from dgmquestionbank.com on the date checked; the product is migrating to munromedics.com, so counts, prices, access terms and features should be re-verified on the live site before you rely on them. Disclosure: iatroX operates a UK question bank that competes with Munro; this article confines iatroX to the unseen-measurement job and does not claim it prepares you for the OSCE. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: RCP Diploma in Geriatric Medicine exam page and syllabus/blueprint (February 2025), rcp.ac.uk; Munro DGM Question Bank, dgmquestionbank.com and munromedics.com; British Geriatrics Society resources, bgs.org.uk; "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score," iatrox.com/blog/qbank-percentage-not-your-exam-score; iatroX comparison hub, iatrox.com/compare.