There is no single "best" DFSRH resource, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling one. There is only the right stack for your time to the diploma, your budget and — most of all — your learner profile. This is a decision tree, not a ranking: work out which branch you are on from measurable signals, then buy the minimum that closes your specific gap. Take an unseen baseline first so the branch you follow is chosen by data, not by mood. iatroX is one input to that decision — the unseen-measurement reading — not the decision-maker.
A quick naming note: the FSRH is now the College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (CoSRH) and the diploma is moving from DFSRH to DCSRH, with fsrh.org redirecting to cosrh.org. Same qualification, same eKA. Verify the current name and fee before you pay.
Start by segmenting yourself honestly
The right resource depends on which of these you are. Read the list and pick the one that fits — most people are a blend, so choose the dominant profile:
- First attempt, on the standard pathway. You need the mandatory components plus one knowledge bank; nothing exotic.
- Retake after failing the eKA. Your problem is diagnostic before it is a shopping problem: you need to know which domains failed, and because the eKA returns no score breakdown, that means unseen domain-level measurement.
- Established sexual and reproductive healthcare clinician. You may already hold much of the knowledge; your risk is currency (has UKMEC moved since you trained?) not volume.
- Weak foundations. You need teaching first — e-learning and structured guidance — before any bank will help; drilling questions on knowledge you do not yet hold just manufactures frustration.
- Strong knowledge, poor pacing. You know the material but run out of time or second-guess; you need timed, unseen blocks, not more content.
- Strong on MCQs, weak on practical performance. Your eKA is safe but your supervised clinical experience is the real gap; no bank fixes that.
The minimum effective stack
Almost every candidate is well served by four slots, and only the ones the profile requires:
- One primary knowledge bank — for eKA breadth and unseen practice. One is plenty; a second only earns its place under the two-Q-bank rule, as a measurement layer that does not duplicate the first.
- Official calibration material — the FSRH/CoSRH e-learning, guidance and UKMEC 2025. This is non-negotiable and mostly the mandatory route anyway.
- One teaching or reference source — only if your foundations are weak. Strong candidates can skip it.
- One modality tool where relevant — supervised clinical practice and counselling debrief with a registered trainer, which is a mandatory diploma component, not an optional extra.
The discipline is subtraction: add the third and fourth slots only when your profile demands them. A confident retaker with a pacing problem does not need a new textbook; they need timed unseen blocks.
Budget bands
Verify every figure on the provider's page on the day you buy — prices and access periods change without notice, and the ones below are indicative, not quotes.
- Free / low-cost. The CoSRH e-learning and Course of Study you are paying for anyway, UKMEC 2025 and FSRH/CoSRH guidance (free primary documents), NICE CKS, and any free tier of a UK bank for baseline measurement. This band alone covers the knowledge if you are disciplined.
- One premium resource. Add a single paid eKA question bank — a dedicated CoSRH/DCSRH bank such as PasSRH, or a broader UK bank — chosen for the job your profile needs (breadth, analytics or unseen measurement). Do not buy two.
- Comprehensive stack. A paid bank plus additional coached counselling practice or a revision course, justified only if you are a nervous retaker or have genuinely weak foundations. For most first-attempt candidates this is over-buying.
Time bands — and what to omit
Match the plan to weeks remaining, and be honest that a shorter runway means omitting things, not compressing everything.
- Under four weeks. Triage only. Run the mandatory components, drill unseen eKA blocks at pace, and hammer UKMEC 2025 recency. Omit new textbooks and any second bank; there is no time to metabolise them.
- Four to twelve weeks. The standard window. Work through the e-learning, add one bank, and interleave unseen timed blocks weekly while your supervised clinical experience runs in parallel. Omit a second bank unless a domain is genuinely resistant.
- More than twelve weeks. Build foundations properly: teaching first, then banked practice, then unseen measurement, with the clinical experience spread across the whole period so competence sign-off is not a last-minute scramble. Omit nothing structural — but resist the temptation to collect resources you will not finish.
Decision matrix: which resource is best at which job
No product is best at everything; each has one job it does well. Match the job to your gap.
| Resource type | Best job | Where it is weak | Verify on the day |
|---|---|---|---|
| CoSRH e-SRH e-learning + Course of Study | Teaching the knowledge base; the mandatory route | Not a timed exam simulator; not unseen measurement | Current modules and fee, cosrh.org |
| UKMEC 2025 + FSRH/CoSRH guidance | Official calibration; the source correct answers trace to | Not practice questions | Current edition, cosrh.org |
| Dedicated CoSRH/DCSRH bank (e.g. PasSRH) | Volume and analytics targeted to the eKA blueprint | Currency depends on the vendor's update cadence | Question count, price, last-reviewed date (vendor-reported) |
| Broad UK bank (incl. iatroX) | Unseen measurement of transfer; UK-core coverage | Not SRH-exclusive; not a counselling or clinical tool | Free-tier scope and current coverage |
| Registered trainer, supervised practice | Counselling and clinical competence; the diploma sign-off | Not a knowledge-breadth tool | Trainer availability and case mix |
Link down, do not duplicate: the cannibalisation guardrail
The narrow evidence behind each product — exact question counts, prices, update cadence and question style — belongs in the individual platform audits, and this hub deliberately does not reproduce it. That restraint is not only tidiness; it prevents the common failure in which a dozen near-identical "best DFSRH resource" pages compete with one another and leave the reader more confused than when they arrived. This page has one job: to route you to the right kind of resource for your profile. The detailed head-to-head — whether this bank's currency beats that one's, whether a given mock feels like the real eKA — lives in the child audits, which you reach through the comparison hub. Read this page to choose your branch; read the child audit to choose the specific product on that branch. If you ever find two pages making the same claim in the same words, one of them is redundant, and the remedy is a link, not another duplicate.
Three worked profiles
Profile A — GP trainee, first attempt, ten weeks out, mixed baseline. Baseline shows solid contraception knowledge but shaky STI and safeguarding domains and no idea on current UKMEC changes. Stack: CoSRH e-learning (mandatory) plus one bank. Weekly allocation: two e-learning modules, three unseen timed blocks weighted toward STI and safeguarding, one UKMEC-recency session, and supervised consultations logged in clinic. Exit criteria: unseen blocks at target across all domains, UKMEC 2025 categories recited from memory, trainer sign-off underway. No second bank, no textbook.
Profile B — experienced practice nurse, eKA retake, five weeks out. Failed once, no score breakdown, quietly demoralised. The problem is diagnostic. Stack: her existing bank, used only for unseen domain-level measurement, plus the UKMEC 2025 summary of key changes. Weekly allocation: two diagnostic unseen blocks to localise the failed domains, then targeted re-learning of just those, then re-test on fresh items; explicit UKMEC-recency drilling because her original training predates 2025. Exit criteria: the previously failed domains now at target on unseen items. She buys nothing new; she measures better.
Profile C — SRH clinician, strong knowledge, four months out, procedural ambitions. Knows the content cold; the gap is currency and, for her goals, procedures. Stack: UKMEC 2025 and CoSRH guidance for currency, a light unseen bank to confirm the eKA is safe, and — separately from the core diploma — the FSRH Letters of Competence pathway for intrauterine or subdermal techniques. Weekly allocation: one currency session, one confirmatory unseen block, and supervised procedural training on the LoC route. Exit criteria: eKA comfortably passing on unseen items, UKMEC currency confirmed, LoC training progressing. She deliberately does not over-invest in banked questions she does not need.
The evidence hierarchy behind every choice
When two sources disagree, rank them. Official material first for format and for what the eKA can look like — the CoSRH eKA guidance is the only sanctioned window. Primary guidance next for content: UKMEC 2025, FSRH/CoSRH clinical guidance, NICE CKS, and the SmPC/eMC for product detail. Vendor pages for product facts only — counts, prices, features — always labelled vendor-reported and verified on the day. Independent testing last, for user experience: does the bank feel current, are the explanations sourced, is the interface usable. A resource that scores well on marketing but cannot show a last-reviewed date fails the hierarchy regardless of how polished it looks.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know whether I have covered the full DFSRH blueprint? Take the published eKA subject list — the contraceptive methods and their UKMEC categories, emergency contraception, STI and vaginal-discharge assessment, asymptomatic screening, HIV testing, unplanned-pregnancy assessment, and the consent and safeguarding themes — and mark each domain covered only when you can pass unseen questions on it and have met it in supervised practice. The decision tree keys off exactly this: an empty or weak domain tells you which resource to add. Coverage is a map you can evidence, not a completion percentage.
Can one question bank be enough for DFSRH? For the eKA specifically, one current, well-sourced bank is usually enough, and buying a second is the most common over-purchase on this pathway — add one only as a distinct measurement layer under the two-Q-bank rule, never as a duplicate. For the diploma as a whole, no bank is ever enough, because the Course of Study and supervised Clinical Experience are mandatory and human-assessed. Choose one bank well rather than collecting several.
What should I measure instead of my overall Q-bank percentage for DFSRH? Measure domain-level performance on unseen, timed blocks, because that is what tells you which branch of the decision tree you are on and which resource to buy next. A blended percentage cannot do that: it hides a weak safeguarding domain behind strong contraception recall. Track the unseen trend per domain, your accuracy on current UKMEC 2025 items, and your trainer's clinical feedback — the three signals the percentage averages away.
When should I stop doing new DFSRH questions? Stop when your unseen, timed blocks hold at target across every blueprint domain and your errors are slips rather than gaps — buying or drilling more questions past that point is the sunk-cost reflex the decision tree is designed to prevent. Redirect the freed time to whatever your profile still lacks, which for most candidates near the finish is supervised clinical experience and UKMEC currency, not more MCQs.
Which DFSRH resource should I use for my weakest component? Let the modality of the weakness pick the resource: a knowledge or recency gap points to a current bank plus the UKMEC 2025 and CoSRH primary documents; a counselling gap points to coached and supervised consultations with a clinician's debrief; a procedural gap points to the separate FSRH Letters of Competence pathway. That is the whole logic of the tree — resource follows gap, and an unseen iatroX baseline is the quickest way to see which gap is real.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 21 July 2026. Prices, question counts and access periods are vendor-reported and change without notice — verify each on the provider's own page on the day you buy; the FSRH-to-CoSRH and DFSRH-to-DCSRH transition is live, so confirm the current name and fee on cosrh.org, and note UKMEC 2025 supersedes the 2016 edition and 2019 amendment. Disclosure: iatroX operates a UK question bank that appears in this decision tree; its role is confined to the unseen-measurement input that informs the choice, and it is explicitly not the mandatory Course of Study or supervised Clinical Experience. Corrections are welcome via the feedback route on iatrox.com.
References: College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (formerly FSRH) diploma pathway, eKA guidance and Clinical Effectiveness Unit guidance, cosrh.org; UKMEC 2025, cosrh.org; PasSRH revision, passrh.co.uk (vendor-reported); NICE CKS contraception topics and the SmPC/eMC; "The two-Q-bank rule," iatrox.com/blog/the-two-q-bank-rule-how-to-add-a-second-bank-without-duplicating-questions-or-destroying-calibration; "Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score," iatrox.com/blog/qbank-percentage-not-your-exam-score; iatroX comparison hub, iatrox.com/compare.