If you are preparing the DFSRH electronic Knowledge Assessment (eKA) and are weighing up PasSRH, this is a coverage audit rather than an advertisement. PasSRH is a genuine, DFSRH-focused question bank that maps well onto the knowledge the eKA rewards. Its principal limitation is structural, not a fault of the product: like any question bank, it prepares the knowledge gate and cannot reproduce the supervised clinical experience or the practical competence assessment the full diploma requires. This article is for the candidate deciding what job PasSRH should do in their revision stack.
What PasSRH offers for DFSRH right now
Current state, last checked 21 July 2026. Figures are vendor-reported from passrh.co.uk and you should confirm them before purchase.
- Question volume: over 800 questions and answers (vendor-reported), covering contraception, the UKMEC, STIs, early pregnancy and cervical screening.
- Price and access: £59 for three months' access (vendor-reported).
- Products: a diploma bank (badged for the DFSRH/DCSRH), plus separate MCSRH Part 1 and a newly launched MCSRH Part 2 for the membership pathway — a different, more advanced exam, so make sure you are buying the diploma bank.
- AI / adaptive features: none advertised. PasSRH is a fixed question bank with a mock, not an adaptive engine.
- Mock: a mock knowledge assessment is included with the subscription (vendor-reported).
- Question formats: predominantly multiple-choice, with some free-text and diagram-labelling exercises oriented toward the practical assessment.
One currency note worth flagging honestly: PasSRH's site describes the diploma assessment in the older language of the Online Theory Assessment (OTA) and the Assessment Half Day (AHD), and uses the DCSRH badge. The knowledge component is the same content now delivered as the FSRH eKA; map PasSRH's framing onto the current eKA on the official site, and verify the live question count and price on passrh.co.uk, because vendor pages change.
The eKA and the DFSRH blueprint
The eKA is a 100-question, single-best-answer paper, five options each, up to two hours, computer-based, with no negative marking and an immediate pass/fail decision and no score breakdown. It is the knowledge gate to the diploma; the full DFSRH also requires the e-SRH e-learning, a Course of Study, and supervised Clinical Experience with a registered trainer. (The Faculty, FSRH, is transitioning to the College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, and the diploma is being renamed DCSRH — the same qualification and the same eKA during the transition; verify the current name on the official site.)
The blueprint is contraception-led. It spans the main contraceptive methods and their UKMEC eligibility categories, emergency contraception, STI and vaginal-discharge assessment, asymptomatic screening and HIV testing, and the assessment and onward referral of unplanned pregnancy, all threaded through consent, confidentiality and safeguarding. Because the content is contraception and hormonal prescribing, the correct answers are written from FSRH clinical guidance, UKMEC, NICE CKS and the SmPC on the eMC — the sources you should reconcile any bank against.
Live question count, by blueprint domain
The most common mistake candidates make with any bank is trusting the headline total. "Over 800 questions" tells you about volume, not about distribution. PasSRH does not publish a per-domain breakdown, so you cannot take a domain split on trust — you have to sample and tag. The table below sets the official domain emphasis against what to check inside the bank; the middle column is the expected eKA weighting, not a vendor-published count, and is labelled as such.
| Blueprint domain | Expected eKA emphasis (illustrative, not vendor-published) | What to verify in PasSRH |
|---|---|---|
| Combined & progestogen-only methods + UKMEC | High | Enough UKMEC-category reasoning, not just mechanism recall |
| Long-acting reversible contraception (IUD/IUS/implant) | High | Counselling, eligibility and problem-solving items present |
| Emergency contraception & drug interactions | Moderate | Interaction scenarios (e.g. enzyme inducers) covered |
| STI / vaginal discharge / HIV testing | Moderate | Assessment and management sequencing, not just facts |
| Unplanned pregnancy assessment & referral | Moderate | Pathway and safeguarding items, not omitted |
| Consent, confidentiality, safeguarding, young people | Threaded throughout | Fraser/young-person competence scenarios represented |
To run the audit, pull a random 40–50 items, tag each to a domain, and see whether the distribution tracks the emphasis above. If contraception is over-represented and STI or unplanned-pregnancy items are thin, you know where your second source needs to sit.
Question style: recall versus application
The eKA rewards application — picking the right UKMEC category, the safest method for a specific patient, the correct next step — over the recall of isolated facts. When you sample PasSRH, grade each item on that axis. Ask: does this stem give me a patient and a decision, or does it ask me to remember a number I could look up? A bank that is heavier on recall than the exam will feel reassuring and will inflate your percentage, which is the dangerous direction of error. A bank pitched at application, with plausible five-option distractors drawn from real practice, is doing the job the eKA will ask of you. Check stem length (short-to-moderate vignettes match the exam), option plausibility, and whether management questions require you to sequence steps rather than recognise a single fact.
Jurisdiction and recency
Contraceptive and sexual-health guidance moves, and an out-of-date item is worse than a missing one because it teaches the wrong thing confidently. Take a stratified sample across PasSRH's domains and reconcile each against current primary guidance — UKMEC categories, the relevant FSRH guideline, NICE CKS, and the product SmPC on the eMC — and record the date you checked. If you find items resting on superseded thresholds or older method advice, that is a switch-or-supplement signal, not a rounding error. Any bank, including iatroX, deserves the same scrutiny; recency auditing is a habit, not a one-off.
The format gap: what a Q-bank cannot prepare
Here is the honest limit, stated plainly. A question bank — PasSRH, iatroX or any other — prepares the eKA knowledge gate. It cannot prepare, and should not claim to prepare, the parts of the DFSRH where competence is demonstrated: the supervised Clinical Experience, contraceptive counselling and method fitting under a registered trainer, and the practical assessment. PasSRH includes some free-text and diagram-labelling practice oriented at the practical assessment, which is a useful extra, but written practice is not supervised clinical sign-off. If you are choosing a bank expecting it to make you clinically competent, you are asking the wrong tool for the wrong job. Choose it for what it does: knowledge coverage and timed retrieval for the eKA.
Duplication and contamination
The risk with any single bank you work repeatedly is that completion quietly becomes recognition. After a couple of passes you are no longer reasoning to the answer; you are remembering that this is "the implant-and-enzyme-inducer question" and its answer sits third. Near-duplicate stems accelerate this — the same concept reworded four times can feel like breadth while adding little. Watch for it: if your PasSRH percentage climbs while your performance on unseen items stalls, you are rehearsing the bank, not the blueprint. That is the exact failure the two-Q-bank rule exists to prevent, and it is why an unseen measurement layer matters.
Best-fit matrix: what job should PasSRH do?
Use this to place PasSRH in your stack rather than to crown it. Decide from measurable gaps, not novelty.
| Revision role | Is PasSRH a strong fit? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation building | Yes, with e-SRH alongside | Broad DFSRH-specific coverage and a mock to structure early work |
| First-pass bank | Yes | Volume and domain spread suit a structured first pass |
| Second bank (for coverage) | Situational | Only if it fills a domain your first bank left thin — not for comfort |
| Retake support | Yes | Fresh volume after a fail, provided you also fix the diagnosed gap |
| Final unseen simulation | Partial | Its mock helps, but keep an unseen source for a true readiness check |
A worked seven-day plan
A clinician four weeks out has audited PasSRH as contraception-strong, STI-adequate and mostly application-level, but they have re-sat much of it and their unseen performance has plateaued. PasSRH does one defined job — structured coverage and a mock — and iatroX does another: unseen, timed transfer practice on fresh items. No proprietary algorithm is implied; this is manual scheduling driven by measured gaps.
| Day | PasSRH job | iatroX job (unseen measurement) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contraception/UKMEC set in learning mode | 20-item timed baseline; tag every miss to a domain |
| 2 | Review PasSRH mock feedback on weak items | 15 fresh STI/sexual-health items, timed |
| 3 | Emergency contraception + interactions set | Retest only Day 1 errors as fresh retrieval |
| 4 | Unplanned-pregnancy & safeguarding items | 15 fresh items across your two weakest domains |
| 5 | Read the FSRH guideline you keep missing (verify on CKS/eMC) | 20-item mixed block at strict ~72s/item |
| 6 | Light error-log review only | 15 fresh mixed items, timed |
| 7 | — | Full 100-item mixed mock, unseen, timed, once; set next quotas from analytics |
The design keeps PasSRH for breadth and structure and reserves iatroX for the unseen check, so no item does double duty and the percentage you watch is a transfer measure, not a memory of the bank.
Decision checklist: continue, supplement, switch or stop
- Continue if your PasSRH sample matches the eKA cognitive level and domain emphasis and your unseen scores are rising.
- Supplement with a second, differently-worded source if you have completed PasSRH and a blueprint-emphasised domain is still thin, or if you need more application-level practice.
- Switch if a stratified recency check shows material drift from current UKMEC/FSRH/CKS guidance.
- Stop buying more banks when you are covering the blueprint and your ceiling is timing and calibration — then it is mocks, not more questions.
The bottom line
PasSRH is a credible, DFSRH-specific knowledge bank: solid contraception and UKMEC coverage, a useful mock, and a fair price for three months, all vendor-reported and worth verifying. Its blind spots are the ones every bank shares — it prepares the eKA knowledge, not the supervised clinical competence, and repeated use risks recognition replacing reasoning. Give it the job it is good at, audit its distribution and recency yourself rather than trusting the headline, and keep an unseen, timed layer to tell you what your percentage cannot.
Frequently asked questions
Is PasSRH enough for DFSRH on its own? For the eKA knowledge component, PasSRH's vendor-reported 800-plus questions and its included mock are enough to carry a well-organised candidate a long way, but "enough on its own" overstates it, because the full DFSRH also requires the e-SRH e-learning, a Course of Study and supervised Clinical Experience that no question bank supplies. Most candidates also benefit from a second, unseen source to check that their PasSRH percentage reflects transferable knowledge rather than familiarity with the bank. So it is a strong core for the knowledge gate, not a complete diploma solution.
Which DFSRH component does PasSRH not reproduce well? PasSRH cannot reproduce the supervised Clinical Experience and the practical competence assessment — the counselling, method-fitting and hands-on sign-off that a registered trainer certifies — because those are in-person clinical components, not knowledge questions. Its free-text and diagram exercises nod toward the practical assessment, which helps, but written practice is not clinical sign-off. Treat the clinical pathway as a separate workstream that PasSRH, like any bank, is not designed to deliver.
How many PasSRH questions should I complete per day for DFSRH? A sustainable range for most candidates is roughly 30–40 questions per day, adjusted to the weeks remaining and, more importantly, targeted at the domains your audit flagged as thin rather than at a round-number quota. Completing a large daily count of items you already recognise is low-value; a smaller number of unseen or genuinely difficult items, reviewed properly, beats grinding the whole bank for the sake of the completion bar. Let measured weakness, not volume, set the number.
When should I stop using PasSRH and move to mixed mocks? Move to full, mixed, timed 100-item mocks once you are covering the blueprint and your unseen performance has stabilised — usually the final two to three weeks before your booked eKA. A practical trigger is when your PasSRH percentage keeps rising but your score on fresh, unseen items does not: that gap means you are rehearsing the bank, and mock conditions on new material will tell you far more than another pass through familiar questions.
How should I combine PasSRH with iatroX without duplicating practice? Assign each a distinct job so no question is answered twice: use PasSRH for structured coverage, its mock and first-pass volume, and use iatroX purely for unseen, timed transfer practice on items you have not met, driving your iatroX quotas from the domains PasSRH left weak. Read the iatroX result as a transfer measure, not an exam prediction, and never re-import a PasSRH item you already remember. Kept separate, the two layers reinforce rather than contaminate each other.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. PasSRH's question count, price, mock inclusion and product range are vendor-reported from passrh.co.uk and may change — verify before purchase, and note the site's OTA/AHD/DCSRH framing maps to the current FSRH eKA. Disclosure: iatroX operates a UK question bank that competes with PasSRH; in this article iatroX is confined to the eKA knowledge and unseen-MCQ measurement layer only, and does not provide the Course of Study, supervised Clinical Experience or practical competence assessment the diploma requires. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: PasSRH product and demo pages, passrh.co.uk (vendor-reported); FSRH electronic Knowledge Assessment (eKA) candidate pages, fsrh.org; UKMEC and FSRH clinical guidance; NICE CKS Contraception; product SmPCs via the eMC. Internal: Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score; the two-Q-bank rule; the iatroX comparison hub; the iatroX DFSRH question bank.