What you should do to pass PLAB 1 in one attempt?

What you should do to pass PLAB 1 in one attempt?

As you may all know PLAB 1 is the first part of the PLAB examination. For those who don’t know, PLAB is the examination required to gain license to work as a doctor in the U.K.

I personally passed PLAB 1 on my second attempt, hence why i decided to write this up because the mistakes i made during my first attempt are the ones i rectified and was able to clear it on my second attempt. I am hoping this will help anyone who is preparing to take part in the exam.

PLAB 1 is not a hard exam as compared to USMLE but its still not something one should take lightly or prepare for it on “easy mode”. There are alot of resources online which can be very helpful. Some of the most popular ones are www.plabable.com, www.plab1keys.com, www.medrevision.com, www.passmedicine.com etc. I only named these four because these are the ones i know of very well and i have friends who have used them extensively.

Now, in my case, i only used plabable and plab1keys in both of my attempts. I did have a subscription of passmedicine but i honestly did not even go through it. What i want to do is to explain what i did differently from my first attempt that gave me a better and higher chance of passing the second time.

During my first attempt, i went through plab1keys (summarised notes specific for the exam) and plabable (plabable is a qbank website). Though, I went through plab1keys more than plabable. I did all the qbank in plabable but only did it once. I thought going through plab1keys several time was more than good enough but clearly i was being illusioned by my brain thinking than i know the content. I studied for maybe around 2 months and went for the exam. Results came out and i was off by 15 marks. I was definitely disheartened but not discouraged, so i rebooked for another date and changed my approach.

The emphasis is on the word approach, you might have good medical knowledge but do remember this is a clinically applied exam, so if you cant apply the knowledge; you will not pass. It is not like USMLE where you could be asked about the nitty-gritty details of a specific disease or a biochemical pathway or a genetic disorder etc.

So in my second attempt, i approached it differently, i made anki flash cards of the plab1key notes and then i went through plabable. And this time around i went through it 3 times. Twice i answered the whole qbank and the third time i went through the questions i had flagged. I flagged questions even though i got them right depending on the level of difficulty.

I tried to understand why questions were answered in specific manners. Some questions can be confusing but are very easy if you understand what exactly you are being asked and thats what plabable and most of the qbanks do. They are also up to date with the nice guidelines so that also helps you stay updated.

Basically thats the gist, your approach needs to be specific and please spend more and more time answering questions rather than trying to memorize. Once you do that, you are good to go. Try as much as possible to go through any qbanks atleast 2 or 3 times. Sometimes, they do repeat questions or may portray a question very similar to what you have practiced, so it will be easy for you to answer and tackle it.

I hope you found this helpful and if you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to share with me.

Good luck in your exam and May the force be with you.