Quality & provenance

How Core Revision questions are written

Most question banks ask you to trust anonymous authors. We would rather show you exactly who writes our content, how it is checked, and when it was last reviewed.

How our questions are written and checked

1. Written by practising UK GPs. Our questions are written by GPs still working in clinic, mapped to the relevant exam blueprint (the RCGP curriculum for the AKT, NHS England’s twelve CPS areas for the MSRA) and current UK guidance (NICE, SIGN, GMC Good Medical Practice 2024, UKMEC 2025).

2. Reviewed and re-audited. Questions are reviewed for accuracy, clinical realism and exam relevance, and we re-audit the banks against current guidance and correct what we find. Corrections are logged and dated in the review log below.

3. Designed for learning. Our specialist adviser — an Educational Psychologist — advises on how content is presented for clarity, cognitive load and accessibility, including for neurodivergent learners.

The people behind this process are named, with GMC numbers, on our About page — Dr Victoria Hammond (Co-Founder & Lead for Educational Design) and Dr David Palethorpe (Co-Founder & GP Partner), with educational oversight from Dr Laura Young.

Every answer teaches through the Core Lens

Each question carries a Core Lens summary — the safety cue, the guideline point and the exam trap — plus a Deep Dive explanation that teaches the reasoning, not just the answer. Explanations link to the exact guideline they rest on, so you can check us.

Audited continuously, not once

The whole bank goes through repeated machine-assisted and clinician-led audits. In 2026 alone: full-bank audits in May and June, and a complete re-scan of every published question on 1–2 July 2026 (guideline updates applied the same week — for example the 2024/25 asthma guideline change to NG245 and the falls guidance move to NG249).

When guidance changes, questions change. Members get every update automatically, at no extra cost.

Honest numbers

Our question counts are verified against the live database, not rounded up for marketing: 2,400+ AKT-style questions (2,436 verified on 14 September 2026), 2,200+ MSRA questions (1,700+ Clinical Problem Solving and 500 Professional Dilemmas, verified on 29 September 2026), plus dedicated banks for each diploma track. If a number on this site is ever out of date, tell us and we will fix it.

Found something wrong? That makes you part of the process.

Every question has a flag control. Flagged items are reviewed by a GP, and if we implement your suggestion we thank you with 20% off your next renewal. Email admin@corerevision.com — we answer every message ourselves.

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Last reviewed: 11 October 2026 · Core Revision Ltd is an independent educational platform and is not affiliated with the RCGP.

Review log

We keep a public record of when the question bank was last reviewed and what changed. Most recent first:

  • 16 October 2026 — The Royal College of Physicians has moved the CGM application window to 14 December 2026–18 January 2027 and published the £350 CGM fee; both are now updated across the DGM pages.
  • 11 October 2026 — Exam dates and fees re-checked against the Royal College of Physicians: the CGM application window (4–18 January 2027) and the 2027 DGM clinical exam fee (£668) corrected on ten pages. Whole AKT bank re-measured: 2,431 questions, the correct answer spread evenly across A–E (486, 486, 486, 486, 487) and the longest option correct in 23% of questions, close to the 20% expected by chance.
  • 10–11 October 2026 — AKT answer options rebalanced so that neither an option’s length nor its letter gives the answer away: options rewritten in 1,076 questions, a wrong option lengthened in 699 more and a further 205 rewritten; the correct answer moved to a new letter in 517 questions, with the 549 letter references in their explanations updated to match. Keys, stems and explanations were otherwise unchanged.
  • 10 October 2026 — 11 explanations that had been held for clinical review were rewritten in full and republished; 8 remain marked “under clinical review” while the keyed answer is checked against current guidance. 15 guideline citations corrected (lipids now cited to NICE NG238; CG178, CG97, NG31 and NG234 numbering; the cervical screening recall interval in force since July 2025).
  • 9 October 2026 — Whole-site audit. 9 questions rewritten for the Supreme Court’s 2026 ruling on deprivation of liberty and for NICE NG222; “two-week wait” replaced with the current “urgent suspected cancer referral” in 340 questions and 9 pages.
  • 14 September 2026 — Full structural re-audit of the AKT bank: all 2,436 live questions checked for option count, a single keyed answer, no empty or duplicate options, a Core Lens block and a Deep Dive explanation, and agreement between the keyed answer and the answer named in the explanation. Counts re-verified against the live database, with UK-spelling, person-first language and guideline-citation corrections applied the same day.
  • 9 August 2026 — Full technical re-audit of the platform: the complete plugin stack updated behind a fresh off-site backup.
  • 14 July – 8 August 2026 — Platform expansion published: question banks and revision guides for six medical diplomas (DGM, DOccMed, DRCOG, DCH, DipMSK & DTM&H), UKMLA and PLAB tracks, AKT & MSRA mock exams, the IMG Hub and ‘The NHS, Explained’ orientation series.
  • 8 July 2026 — Question counts re-verified against the live database (2,322 AKT-style questions; 1,205 MSRA Clinical Problem Solving and 381 Professional Dilemmas items) and every marketing claim aligned to the verified numbers.
  • 1–2 July 2026 — Complete re-scan of every published question. Guideline refreshes applied the same week (asthma updated to NG245, falls guidance moved to NG249, plus UKMEC 2025 and GMC Good Medical Practice 2024 checks).
  • June 2026 — Clinical re-audit across the banks; around 100 accuracy and guideline corrections applied.
  • May 2026 — Full-bank audit: UK-terminology and guideline-currency pass across the question base.
  • Ongoing — when national guidance changes, affected questions are updated within days and every member receives the update automatically, at no extra cost.

This page and the quality process behind it were last reviewed on 11 October 2026.