If you find yourself here, pat yourself on a good decision. It means you have been trying to learn about the 2B exam and have discovered the treasures that are my reviews. Before I deep dive into the review itself, I have a full fledged article on the 2B exam which you can check out if you seek ancient wisdom and exciting insights into the preparation strategy.
To succeed in what admittedly was one of the trickier exams I have grappled with, you need powerful tools and one of the most potent weapons I had in my arsenal was Revise Radiology. I personally favoured the FRCR 2B combined subscription which covers both the viva and the written component because I realised pretty early on during my preparation that I needed all the help I can get and I personally was not looking forward to taking different subscriptions from different services.
Disclosure: As always, I would like to get this important fact out of the way. This is not a paid review. The opinions are my own and I only endorse products and services that I personally like and in this case, used myself. I do get to offer you an affiliate link which you can use for a 2.5% discount (5% for the Vellore Course) and I will get a commission if you buy something on my recommendation.
What is Revise Radiology?
It’s an educational platform that aims to provide everything you need to pass the exams. They offer online subscriptions and courses (both online and offline) for all steps of the FRCR. Do they succeed in this worthy endeavour? Well, before I answer that question, let me establish my credentials. I have personally used this platform for my 2B preparation and, thankfully, I passed the exam in my first attempt. Now that I am on the other side of this trial, I will try to describe how Revise radiology fit into my preparation scheme.
Why did I choose Revise Radiology?
One fine day in the summer of 2023, I realised that I was terrified of the viva component of the FRCR 2B. I had talked to a lot of people who have passed the exams and everyone pretty much agreed that the viva is a tough nut to crack especially for International Medical Graduates who are not accustomed to the way things work in the NHS. During my deep research (ahem, few minutes of googling), I came across several options and among them, Revise Radiology stood out for me as a particularly popular choice.
The combined programme promised to get me ready for both the written and viva component and the website had a bunch of reviews from people who said great things about it. I wasn’t born yesterday and I know that great reviews aren’t always the most credible but there were no red flags and after a brief conversation with Dr. Koshy made me feel good about my choice, I jumped in.
What is the FRCR 2B combined subscription?
Once I was in, my hopes and dreams of consuming everything the subscription offers were quickly shattered. In terms of resources, there is a LOT of stuff available to you:
- 80 Curated Rapid Reporting
- 30 Long case Packets
- 100 viva spotters packets (3000 spotters total)
- On-demand videos of 200+ hours of FRCR teaching webinars
- 4 x Study Group sessions per week
- 6-12 hours of viva format teaching per month
I decided to be realistic and use a personalised sieve to filter all the content and use the things I needed the most. If you have the luxury of time, you can probably utilise the available resources better than I did but since I never seem to have enough time, I had to be flexible. I do recommend starting with the introductory video(s) by Dr. Koshy who talks about the best ways of using Revise Radiology.
What do I like it?
The study groups are my favourite feature. I didn’t have a friend or colleague taking the exam with me but the study groups ensured that I had a whole bunch of people in a similar situation with whom I regularly had very productive discussions. I went from having a very rudimentary idea of what was expected of me in the vivas to becoming very confident in presenting my cases. Apart from the study groups with other exam candidates, they also have all-day viva sessions twice a month where FRCR-qualified examiners come in and take multiple sessions where candidates can get more viva practice and excellent feedback. The examiners are friendly and approachable to answer any questions you may have.
I also found the Rapid Reporting and Long Case packets to be very high quality. The 80 packets of rigorous practice prepared me well for the real exam such that I knew to avoid making stupid mistakes. Having adequate practice was very important for me to stamp out my bad habits of overcalling normal films as abnormal – rapids are all about having the correct philosophy more than knowledge IMO and these packets were instrumental in helping me develop that.
The 180 cases with fantastic “8-mark” model answers also help you to level-up. When I compared my answers with the model answers for the first set, I almost cried but when I repeated that for the last set, I was very relieved to see how much I had improved.
I did not have the time to go through all the spotter cases which were introduced as a new feature during my subscription but I did go through 30% of the sets and I thought they were a great way to blitz through some high yield viva cases. You can get a glimpse of some of their spotter cases on my instagram where I have a series where I illustrate some of their cases every week.
Finally, a shout-out to the backend team. Everything was kept up and running for 99% of the time I used the platform and that’s saying something because they were constantly adding new cases and features to it.
What else does Revise Radiology offer for the 2B?
They have separate 2B and Viva subscriptions if you feel you do not need the whole shebang (but the combined is probably the best value for money).
They also have several courses such as the Vellore FRCR Course, Written online course, South West Online Course and many others which you can read more on their website here.
Finally they have the All-inclusive which is a 6 month subscription of everything they have (almost!) that you can read about here.
Want to know more?
Head over to their website to find out more about the details of their subscriptions. They also have a scholarship programme where you can get discounts in return for contributing to their platform if that is something you are interested in.