The final 72 hours before the SCA are for making your existing preparation usable, not creating a new consultation style. Confirm the practical arrangements, revisit a few recurring difficulties and stop adding resources that you cannot meaningfully use. For the autumn 2026 campaign, the RCGP lists sittings on 6-8 October and 3-6 November; your individual allocation remains the relevant date. RCGP examination applications, checked 3 October 2026.
The schedule below is a suggested approach, not an RCGP prescription or a claim that three days can replace a longer preparation programme. Adapt it to your work, caring responsibilities and approved examination arrangements.
Three days before: remove practical uncertainty
Open your current candidate instructions rather than an old group-chat screenshot. Establish which room, device, connection and account you will use, what identification is required and how you should report a technical problem. The RCGP's sitting the SCA guidance is the starting point for the current arrangements.
Write a short operational checklist in your own words. Include the time by which you need to be ready, the person responsible for the room and the contact route for an unexpected problem. Do not assume a colleague's previous sitting used exactly the same process. Where instructions appear inconsistent, ask the examination team rather than choosing the most convenient interpretation.
Rehearse the setup without turning it into another mock. Check that you can hear, be heard and read comfortably. Establish how interruptions will be prevented. Resolve a known problem now, while there is time to obtain help, rather than hoping it disappears on the morning.
Select behaviours, not a catalogue of diagnoses
Read your recent practice feedback and choose a small number of behaviours that recur across cases. A useful target is observable: you give management options before establishing the patient's main concern, or you finish without clarifying what happens next. "Improve communication" is too broad to guide a final session.
Use the RCGP's marking and results information to keep the review connected to the assessed domains. Do not treat a commercial checklist as a secret official marking scheme. Your aim is to make a better clinical consultation, not to insert a phrase at a predetermined minute.
A fictional trainee, Sara, notices that her knowledge is usually adequate but she repeatedly postpones negotiating the agenda. Her final practice therefore starts with a patient presenting several concerns. She practises finding out what matters and explaining the order of the discussion, rather than rereading an entire specialty chapter.
Two days before: rehearse once, then make a specific change
Choose a case that resembles the difficulty without reproducing a familiar script. Attempt it without interruption. Afterwards, identify the point at which the consultation became less effective and describe one alternative action. Then repeat a short segment or use a different case with the same underlying challenge.
The repeat should test a change in behaviour, not whether you can remember the model answer. In Sara's example, the second patient has a different presenting problem but also an unspoken concern. Improvement would mean noticing and exploring that concern while retaining clinical priorities, not reproducing the wording from the first attempt.
As described in iatroX product information for October 2026, SCA simulation offers voice or text practice and feedback linked to the transcript. Practice mode permits pause-and-coach support; uninterrupted exam mode serves a different rehearsal purpose. These are preparation features, not evidence that an automated score predicts your examination result.
Use whichever familiar practice setting provides the feedback you need. A trainer or colleague may be better placed to challenge an unhelpful mannerism or an implausible management explanation. Do not introduce a new tool merely because the examination is close.
One day before: narrow the review
Keep a brief reminder sheet organised around actions. For example: clarify the task, ask what has changed, explain the reasoning, agree the next step. Avoid building a long document containing every possible opening, transition and closing phrase. You need room to respond to the person in front of you.
Check a genuinely unresolved clinical point against an appropriate current source, then close the topic. Do not spend the evening searching for increasingly obscure exceptions to a question you already understand. The boundary is whether further reading changes a decision you are likely to need, not whether there is more information available.
Set a stopping time that leaves a practical evening and morning. Arrange food, travel where relevant, clothing and any essential personal items. These steps are ordinary preparation, not an evidence-based promise to improve a score. They simply remove avoidable decisions from a demanding day.
Decide how you will handle an imperfect consultation
A final rehearsal should include something going less smoothly than expected. The patient may interrupt, decline your suggestion or reveal that you misunderstood the original concern. Practise acknowledging the change and returning to the clinical task without restarting the whole consultation.
After a difficult encounter, do not conduct an imaginary appeal while the next one begins. Use a brief reset: identify the next task, read the available information and engage with the new patient. A mistake in one case does not tell you the result of the whole examination.
Avoid making a rule that every case must contain an identical number of questions or options. The official assessment uses domain judgements, and useful clinical behaviour depends on the scenario. Preparation should make your structure available, not make it compulsory when it no longer fits.
What to stop doing
Stop collecting unverified predictions about which cases will appear. Stop comparing your confidence with a study partner's confidence as though either were an official readiness measure. Stop buying overlapping resources without a named gap to address.
Most importantly, stop treating one late disappointing practice score as a reason to replace the entire approach. Examine the underlying behaviour, make a proportionate correction and preserve what is already working. The final days are most useful when they turn a broad preparation history into a small set of clear, usable actions.
Frequently asked questions
Should I complete a full mock the day before the SCA?
Only when it serves a clear purpose and leaves time to review it without disrupting your practical preparation. A short targeted rehearsal may be more useful than another unreviewed circuit.
Can an AI simulation score tell me whether I will pass?
No validated pass prediction should be inferred from an iatroX practice score. Use the feedback to identify behaviours to review and seek human observation where needed.
Which SCA date should I plan around?
Use the date and arrangements in your own booking confirmation. Published sitting windows do not mean that every candidate attends on the same day.