My PLAB 1 Experience
Advice for PLAB 1
A lot of people seem to be asking questions about prep for PLAB. I’m no authority on the subject. A lot of others can guide you here on the forum better than I can. But I’ll share what I can.
The main aim should be to practice as many questions as you can and to familiarize yourself with as many questions and as many scenarios as you can. Around 100-150 questions are repeated in the exam and there are around 50-100 new questions in the exam.
I know about the following three sources of questions and I covered all of them:
- Swamy’s 1700 – random questions arranged from Swamy’s past mocks by a senior PLABBER on this forum.
- Samson’s 7 mocks from June 2013 (1400 questions)
- Samson’s online Q bank – questions are arranged according to units (2782 questions)
The first two sources are available for free and you can find them here on this forum. However, you’ll have to buy Samson’s questions from their official website (price varies between 15-30 pounds depending on how far the exam is). These three sources cover nearly 6000 questions and they are more than enough to pass PLAB 1.
If you start practicing questions without reading any theory, you might not be able to understand answers to all the questions. So it might be better to start your prep with Samson’s notes. These notes are exam-oriented, unlike OHCM and OHCS. Read each unit’s notes and then go through Samson’s questions for that unit from the online Q bank. After reading the notes, you’ll find it easier to answer questions. Samson’s Q bank has answers with explanations for most of the questions. So it’s helpful. Do not waste your time in studying OHCM and OHCS. Check OHCM and OHCS only for reference, no need to read them cover to cover. Also, check patient.co.uk for reference, this should be your first source of information whenever there is any doubt about any answer.
I wasted a couple of months on reading Oxford. When I started solving the questions, I realized that reading Oxford was a waste of time. It did not help me in solving questions. I did not have time to go through the notes, so I just went through these 6000 questions twice or thrice. That helped me a lot. Since I had gone through a lot of questions, I was familiar with most of the questions that I saw today in the exam. Most of them had the exact same scenario and the exact same options. I did not take more than 15-20 seconds on these questions. So I would advise all of you to go through as many questions as you can.
How long will it take to prepare for PLAB? That depends on you. I took 8 months. Most people take 6 to 12 weeks.
There’s another source of questions at passmedicine.com. But the questions there are too hard. Questions in PLAB are usually a lot more easier so I would not recommend passmedicine to anyone for PLAB. Some people also subscribed to on-examination’s questions. I don’t know anything about that though.
I know people that have passed PLAB 1 just by doing 1700 Swamy questions and questions on Facebook. I also know people that passed just by doing Samson’s 7 mocks.
That 1700 file is very important. A lot of questions were repeated from there today. But that 1700 file alone is not everything. I’ll say it again, do as many questions as you can. You guys should try to solve questions (after reading notes if possible) and when you get stuck at a question, read about it from Oxford or patient.co.uk or post it on Facebook and someone else will guide you about it. This is a really nice group and people are very helpful. Keep it nice like this, keep sharing knowledge and keep helping each other.
If you still have any questions, you can post them here and if I miss your post here, you can always inbox me on Facebook.
Best of luck!