I thought to myself that I will write it as soon as the exam is done so the result will not influence it

So I’ve been wanting to do this post for a while. I thought to myself that I will write it as soon as the exam is done so the result will not influence it. Now I’m wondering whether the difficulty of the exam will. Either way the PLAB community has helped me so it’s time for me to give back. Sorry it took a couple of days but I had get my thoughts together and read through some of the chaos, including going through my own self doubt, to write this. This post is mainly to help anyone who might be starting off and wants to know what the sources offer. I found the list of sources to be overwhelming and had to ask people and read through a lot of posts to know which ones I should use. I hope this helps anyone who is thinking about source x and wondering if it will suit their style of studying. Of course I cannot tell you which sources GUARANTEE a pass because that’s just ridiculous. All the March Plabbers, feel free to comment below about your experience on any of the sources used. I will list them so you know which ones are coming so if you’re interested in a particular one, you can just skip to it. I will try to compare between similar ones so you can get a better picture. Before you ask, I’m sorry, I don’t have the pdf version to any of them. I paid for all of them. I believe many of these companies are great and the sole reason the market isn’t dominated by one source is because people buy their products and help them stay in business. Finally, NO I’m not sponsored or affiliated or whatever with any of the following sources. Ok now with all that out of the way, let’s get on with this EXTRA LONG post.

Sources

  1. Plabable
  2. Medrevisions
  3. PLAB 1 Keys
  4. Plabverse
  5. Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine
  6. Arora PLAB 1 Audiobook
  7. Samson Notes
  8. Samson Mocks
  9. 1700 Questions
  10. Group Discussions

Let’s get something out of the way first. I had about 5 months to study and somedays I studied 12 - 15 hours while other days I did nothing. I DID NOT use all these sources COMPLETELY. I did use them to some degree, enough to give you an idea of what it’s all about so you can make a decision for yourself. This exam was somewhat difficult and I still don’t feel confident that I will definitely pass but I know I did my best and most likely it will be enough. I’m just taking in the comfort of many past Plabbers who says the results will be ok. So let’s hope for that. Let’s just put it this way, it’s not like I didn’t know what any of the questions meant, I just had to make smart guesses. Let’s get on with the post!

Plabable & Medrevisions

Which one which one which one? Why choose one? Here’s the breakdown

Plabable has been recommended by many as the gold standard for PLAB 1 and people say do it 3 times do it 4 times get 90-95% in mocks and you’ll be fine. Although those people might have good intention, I think that’s a little misleading. Doing Plabable that many times will just make you remember the answers before you finish reading the questions. So Plabable is essentially a source with around 2000 questions that has taken past question stems (found in 1700 and more recent ones) and formed full questions and answer choices. They have then explained the said answer in the description in a very short manner. Sometimes for further explanations they provide their own links to explain something a little deeper and NICE/Patient info links that you can read to further the knowledge. They provide 9 full mocks and a few more incomplete mocks. These are already prepared and they are the same questions in the question bank. Now you can see why getting 90% can be misleading. The comment section is GOLD though. It has extra information about the question or a mnemonic that will help you remember. You cannot reset the question bank or the mocks. If you want to attempt them again, you have to pay. Regarding the NICE/Patient info links, I didn’t read through every single one. It’s time consuming. Go through something if you don’t understand it, otherwise refer to OHCM. Back to the 90% mark, I have heard of SO MANY people passing getting way less than that as long as they understand the concept, and people failing even with more than 90%. As a rule of thumb, if you did the questions not too long ago, aim for a higher percentage but if you did them a while back a lower percentage is completely fine. Find out why you got questions wrong and adjust your thinking.

Medrevisions is similar and different in many ways. You can find past questions and new questions in this question bank of around 4000 questions. The new questions are little difficult at times but they teach you how to how to look at them in a new way from what you’re used to and cover questions you’ve never seen before. If you’re just doing Plabable and getting used to that, then you’re in for a shock when you do this one. The notes are a bit more extensive but teaches the essentials that you need. It covers a lot of things you might have questions on so you don’t need to do a lot of research yourself. The revision program provided lets you do questions you got wrong or marked, repeatedly at different times until you remember them. I would usually do those early in the day and do new questions after. This kind of cuts the need to repeat the bank 2 or 3 or 4 times because you keep seeing everything you got wrong in one place. The best thing I would say are the mocks. You can set the time and reset the mocks and do as many as you want. I was intimidated at first so I only did 60 questions in 60 minutes daily but then I eventually moved on to doing full mocks, towards the end even twice a day. Again, I didn’t have to keep going back to the wrong answers because they were saved in the revision program. I really liked medrevisions because it covered a lot and I definitely needed that. Doing Plabable after wasn’t that difficult, but felt redundant at times. Nonetheless, I’d say it made things easier and maybe for me it probably made the difference after doing so many questions so many times. I also got a discount because I used someone’s code and made $5 every time someone used my code so in the end I ended up only paying like $10 but I’m sure I’ll be able to make that back as well. It was cheap and helpful in the long run so I can’t complain. I won’t be sharing any codes here because I don’t want to gain anything from this, so feel free to share your codes in the comments if you want.

Just an added note, NO I wouldn’t say one bank had more questions in the exam than the other. Medrevisions definitely had the harder questions but I feel it prepared me better. If I had the choice I’d do it first. Do not rely on either question bank for all the knowledge because in the end it’s impossible for them to predict what’s coming word for word in the exam. Understand the concepts and practice as many questions as possible. Don’t get behind the idea of Plabable is enough. Even if it was in theory, you cannot walk into the exam knowing for sure they are going to test you on only past questions. As far as Passmedicine is concerned, I did look into some questions (although many didn’t recommend) and felt that these two question banks were enough since I planned on doing other sources as well.

Plabverse & PLAB 1 Keys

Although it may sound similar, these are VERY different so let get into it.

PLABverse is simply all the Plabable descriptions and notes in an ORGANISED manner. I think that’s the best way to put it. They took all the disease descriptions and put them in a section which includes everything. For example if you’re familiar with Plabable you know that they take parts of a condition and put it into different questions and they don’t always explain the other parts in the answer description. PLABverse just takes all that and put it into one place. For example everything about infective endocarditis will be one one place instead of scattered everywhere. Now this may seem pointless to many if you go through the questions but I found a silver lining to this. I realised I wouldn’t have to sit there and take notes since this included almost all the notes from Plabable. You just need to add what’s missing and your extra thoughts which would save a lot of time. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time for it by the time I found it. I’m sure someone who’s starting off might find it beneficial.

PLAB 1 Keys is almost the complete opposite. This is the reason why I think doing Plabable so many times is pointless. If you did it once and kind of remember the questions, then you can just move on to PLAB 1 Keys because they have that same content repeated in a similar amount of times. For example if infective endocarditis was repeated in 10 questions, PLAB 1 Keys would’ve mentioned it at least 10 times or in “keys” as they are called. When I first started I was a bit put off on their style. It was VERY similar to Plabable and they just repeated the same way. So if you’re thinking “if it’s the same as Plabable, can’t I just read that, isn’t this pointless?”. Absolutely not. As I kept going deeper into the keys, I realised that I started to remember the questions. They have added many new diagrams and tables and included all the mnemonics from Plabable. So when you finish a section you feel a lot better because of the added information. I would actually recommend this and Medrevisions will go more hand in hand than Plabable. But you can see why “Plabable + PLAB 1 Keys will be enough” can be a problem since they are the same. My argument is that you probably only need to do Plabable once, if you choose to, and revise with Keys and then just take the Plabable mocks some time before the exam. Something like Medrevisions would cover the rest, if not all, of the theory. So in short, it is a good revision source of Plabable without having to go through the questions.

Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (OHCM)

SIMPLE. Always refer to OHCM whenever you want to clear a doubt. If you want to go further, go to NICE guidelines. If you have the time read through the OHCM. You don’t need to, I didn’t but I referred to it A LOT! This is the actual GOLD STANDARD so read and refer as much as you can. Make notes somewhere so you don’t have to read it again. Keep reading those notes over and over until it’s drilled into your head.

Arora PLAB 1 Audiobook

I have very mixed feelings about Arora Audiobook. It didn’t provide any notes so you couldn’t keep up with anything but it gives you something to do if you are involved in a daily activity where you want to get some work done but cannot. For example if you are involved in a commute to work, you can throw on some headphones and listen to this on the way there and back. The whole thing is about 9 hours or so if I’m not mistaken and it covers all the topics. Just beware that it’s a bit fast so you might have to rewind/slow down constantly. Also you definitely want to complete those topics before you listen to this, because you have to know the topic in order to keep up with the audio. I couldn’t get a lot of benefit out of it but maybe someone will. If you go to his website, you can find a sample. You can listen to it and see if that’s what you’re looking for.

Samson Notes & Mocks

I’ve heard different things about Samson Notes. That they are outdated and not effective. Yes they can be outdated so it’s up to you to keep up with the guidelines. Once you have finished a section on a question bank you will have an idea on which ones are outdated and you can fix that. However, the importance of these notes are that they don’t follow any bank. Therefore, they have a lot of interesting points within each section. Some points are not even mentioned elsewhere. The hard part is if you don’t take the course, you will have to put in a little effort to figure somethings out.

Samson mocks are something VERY different. They are pretty much 1700 questions with explanations. They have a choice between 4 mocks and 8 mocks and they are EXPENSIVE. 4 mocks are 140 pounds while 8 mocks are 280 pounds. The problem is Dr. Samson comes for only 2 of them most of the time (only once for us). The other mocks are done by teachers who prefer to just read the answer. Sometimes they will refer to Dr. Samson for clarification but will only come back with “Answer C is correct”. The mocks are given earlier in the day and the discussions start later. The discussions are held through a Skype call and there is NO video. They just read the question and the answer which is anyways provided for you. They don’t clarify the answers either (not always because sometimes they do or try). Also, NOTHING starts on time. Not the mocks nor the discussions. You just kind of get used to it. The worst thing is, some of the answers that you know are right, from other sources, are wrong in the mocks and explanations are not always adequate. With all that being said, once Dr. Samson holds the mock, it is like night and day. He goes though every question and answers any doubt so you’re completely sure. I felt having that even once was beneficial. He did something in the end as well. He told us to clear any doubts with him over WhatsApp before the exam and he would answer every single question which was pretty amazing. I felt more confident this way because although the answers clashed with something like Plabable, his answers made more sense. The best part is you can clear any doubt you had from the previous mocks as well, therefore in the end it didn’t matter if those other mocks weren’t that great. So yea, very mixed feelings but in the end I guess I appreciated it. If someone from Samson course is reading this, please take this as positive criticism. The online service is horrible unless Dr. Samson is conducting the class. You can ask anyone that took it for the March exam online.

1700 Questions

Are they outdated? YES. Are they pretty much covered in the question banks? YES. Should I go through them? Yes if you have the time and here’s why. They are very short and the answer explanations are tiny. It won’t take you long to go though them. You can practice your clinchers by answering questions very fast. Doing 50 questions won’t even take an hour. Keep it towards the end to do them quickly. If there’s no time, then just drop it.

Group Discussions

Get with a small group of people who are doing the exam at the same time. Pick a source you want to do together where it gives room for you to discuss. This will help you understand topics from another perspective, find interesting ways to remember stuff and be able to explain things to others which in turn helps you remember better. You can use any of the sources mentioned above, just keep the time frame in mind.

I know this is a VERY long post but I’m not sorry. This is exactly what I didn’t have. I was so confused on what different sources offered, so hopefully I made it easier on you. These are the top sources used for the PLAB exam. Save this post and ask any questions in the comments section below. I might not be in a lot of groups so feel free to share this with others and help someone who’s wondering about these sources. Don’t forget to keep me and other March Plabbers in your prayers for the results

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