At work, spend 45 minutes reviewing 30 plain radiographs per day — CXR, AXR and MSK. This is something you can fit in easily around a normal working day.

If your hospital has access to paediatrics make sure you review a few of these cases every day. This is an area consistently highlighted as a weakness in the examiners' report.

30 plain films per day × 5 days per week × 12 weeks should add up to more than 1000 cases, allowing for annual leave, on-call and sickness. After this initial phase you will need access to exam style packets. It is worth checking whether your hospital or deanery offers these — if so, take full advantage before spending any money.

The name of the game is to maximise the resources available to you before committing to any paid platform.

People are consistently struggling in this area at the exam and your aim should be to give yourself an advantage.

Everyone has a paediatric block as part of their training — it is imperative you take advantage of it. In your paediatric centre they will have access to abnormal CXR, AXR and bone cases. It is worth spending one or two hours in the evening going through the case database. Ask for as much teaching as possible. If there are opportunities at other hospitals to do paediatrics, take them.

Even if your paediatric block falls outside of your six month revision period, do as many plain films as possible. Come in early if you have to. If you can review around 40 to 50 plain films per day during your paediatric block — including hot reporting and reviewing old cases — it will be worth its weight in gold.

You have to make a personal decision — do you sacrifice a few hours to give yourself the best chance of passing first time?

I would recommend only considering paid resources in the final three months before the exam.

Before committing, make sure of two things:

1. Is the software similar to the RCR platform? They should offer you the option to test it for free — either through a trial or a free sample. If nothing is available and you really want to use that platform, contact the provider and ask them to clarify what they offer.
2. Check the case composition. I would recommend against using paid packets that do not replicate the exam composition. You need around 25% paediatric exposure. If this is not clearly stated on their website, ask them directly.

A platform that offers around 750 cases is the sweet spot. Anything less is not enough. Just be aware that revising for this exam is a balancing act — you do not want to commit all of your resources to the short cases at the expense of the oral exam.

Remember — your aim at this stage should be to write exam style model answers. Each packet will take around two hours to complete properly. This is a considerable commitment. It is not practical to do this at the start of revision when your energy should be going into the oral preparation. Think carefully about how you balance your time.