Best free MRCEM revision resources

Last verified: 30 May 2026. Cost, content tier and login model on every external platform listed below were re-checked this month. Some “free” resources require an RCEM membership login (paid annually); we flag which ones below so you do not waste an evening hitting a paywall at 11pm.

TL;DR — the three free resources to bookmark first

1. RCEMLearning (rcemlearning.co.uk) — the official college platform. Blogs, podcasts, clinical cases and a slice of SBAs are open-access. The MRCEM-specific exam prep modules (MRCEM Practice, SBA Revise, SBA Explained) sit behind RCEM membership.
2. Life in the Fast Lane (litfl.com) — the largest free FOAMed library on the planet. The ECG library, CCC (Critical Care Compendium), tox library and EBM bites cover most of the MRCEM SBA blueprint without a single login.
3. Geeky Medics (geekymedics.com) — the strongest free OSCE-station library. Free written guides, video walkthroughs and a growing AI-patient bank; the question-bank side is paid, but the OSCE checklists alone will get you most of the way through an MRCEM OSCE.

Everything else in this article is genuinely useful, but if you only have this evening, start with those three. See also our guide to whether the RCEMLearning podcast is useful for the exam.

Editorial independence: EM Final Exams earns no commission on the products reviewed below. The only product we sell is EMF Premium, disclosed wherever it appears.

How do I think about “free” honestly — what counts and what does not?

There is a lot of marketing noise around “free MRCEM resources”. In practice, the resources you will see split into four tiers, and being honest with yourself about which tier you are using saves money and time:

• Truly free. No account, no card, no trial expiry. Examples: LITFL, St Emlyn’s blog, EM3, NICE guidance, BNF (NHS login but free at point of use for UK clinicians), most of Geeky Medics’ written content, GitHub-hosted Anki community decks.
• Free with RCEM membership. This is the biggest grey area. RCEMLearning’s exam-prep modules, SBA banks, learning sessions and CPD diary are “free” only if you already pay the annual RCEM subscription — £375 a year for a Member by Examination in 2026. If you have already paid it (you almost certainly have to, to sit the exam), treat RCEMLearning as paid-for content you have already bought; use it heavily.
• Limited free trial / freemium. Pastest, MRCEM Success, MRCEM Exam Prep, Quesmed and others will give you 5–100 free questions or a sample module. Useful for sampling tone and difficulty before you commit money. Do not pretend a 50-question trial is a study plan.
• Free at point of use but funded elsewhere. NHS England e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH) sessions, BNF/BNFC, NICE CKS, MicroGuide, the Resuscitation Council UK guidelines and TOXBASE (with an NHS-affiliated login) are all paid for by the NHS or charities. As a working UK trainee you can use them; an IMG outside the NHS may not have access yet.

Throughout this guide, anything marked † needs an RCEM login, anything marked ‡ needs an NHS-affiliated login, and everything else is open-access. See also our guide to using St Emlyn’s blog as a FRCEM revision tool. See also our guide to how to use RCEM Learning sessions for revision.

What is the single best free resource by exam component?

The MRCEM exam has three components: Primary (basic sciences, 180 SBAs, computer-based), SBA (formerly Intermediate, clinical SBAs, computer-based) and OSCE (16 stations, in-person). Free resources do not cover the three components equally well, so pick by what you are sitting next.

For Primary — the basic-sciences nightmare

The Primary is anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, microbiology, pathology and EBM. Free coverage here is patchy because most candidates revise from textbooks (Boon, Ganong, Kumar & Clark) or paid question banks. The best free spine is:

• RCEMLearning Primary practice questions† — 12 free mock Primary questions, plus the broader SBA bank for clinical correlation.
• TeachMeAnatomy — free, well-illustrated regional anatomy. Pair with the RCEM curriculum anatomy list and you have covered most of the 60 anatomy marks.
• Kenhub free atlas — first chapter of each module is free; useful for neuroanatomy in particular.
• BNF‡ — for pharmacology, the BNF and BNFc are the truth source. Free in the UK via NHS OpenAthens or the BNF app.
• Gandolfi Emergency Medicine FRCEM / MRCEM Anki deck — community-built, hosted free on AnkiWeb, covers Primary, SBA and OSCE content. Imperfect but a useful spaced-repetition spine.

For SBA (Intermediate) — the clinical SBA paper

This is where free FOAMed shines, because the SBA tests how you think about ED presentations rather than rote facts.

• LITFL CCC and ECG library — the Critical Care Compendium and Ed Burns’ ECG library cover roughly 70% of the SBA differentials and rhythm strips. Free, no login.
• St Emlyn’s blog and podcast — especially the SBA / FRCEM podcast series and the JC (Journal Club) posts for EBM-style questions.
• RCEMLearning learning sessions† — mapped directly to the RCEM curriculum; if you have your RCEM login, work through the high-yield SLOs.
• NICE CKS and NICE guidelines — the SBA loves a NICE-aligned answer. Asthma, AF, sepsis, PE, suspected cancer pathways — all free, all the source of truth in the exam.
• EM3 (em3.org.uk) — UK-flavoured infographics, podcasts and quick references, openly licensed under Creative Commons. Lovely for revision wallpapers and rapid topic refreshers.

For OSCE — the 16-station in-person exam

The OSCE is the cheapest component to revise for free, because it is fundamentally a communication and procedural-skills exam — you do not need a paid bank, you need a practice partner and a structure.

• Geeky Medics OSCE stations — over 1,300 written OSCE guides, video walkthroughs, a growing AI virtual-patient bank, and free mark schemes. The OSCE checklists are the single best free OSCE resource on the internet.
• RCEM published OSCE blueprint and sample stations† — check the current exam information page on the RCEM website for the most recent station structure and exemplar stations.
• St Emlyn’s OSCE-tagged posts and podcast episodes — particularly the management OSCE and ethics OSCE series.
• EM3 communication-skills pieces — breaking bad news, escalation, MDT conversations.
• YouTube channels: Go Emergency Medicine, Geeky Medics, OSCEstop — free OSCE walkthroughs, often with model candidate performances.
• A study partner with a kitchen timer. Genuinely the best free resource for OSCE. Seven-minute stations, brutal feedback, repeat.

What is the comprehensive free-resource table I can screenshot?

Grouped by exam component, with honest tier labels. Bookmark this.

† requires an RCEM membership login. ‡ requires an NHS-affiliated (OpenAthens, NHS.net or trust SSO) login.

What does the candidate community actually say is worth using?

If you read recent r/doctorsUK and r/emergencymedicine MRCEM threads from the last 18 months, a pretty consistent picture emerges. The peer consensus, paraphrased:

• “MRCEM Success [paid] gets you through Primary and SBA, but if you cannot afford it, RCEMLearning + an Anki community deck + the Oxford Handbook from the library is enough — it just takes longer.”
• “Pastest free trial is worth doing once a week before the exam just to keep question-bank rhythm; do not pay for it just to take a single MRCEM.”
• “LITFL ECG library is non-negotiable for the SBA. Do every case at least once.”
• “For OSCE, Geeky Medics + a study partner beats any paid course. The expensive courses are mainly buying you exam-day feedback under pressure, which you can replicate with a friend and a timer.”
• “IMGs who are not RCEM members yet often forget you can join as Associate Member; the membership pays for itself in RCEMLearning access alone.”
• “Do not pay for a YouTube course. The free YouTube content for MRCEM (Go Emergency Medicine, EM3, RCEMLearning’s own channel) is already enough.”

That last point is worth flagging — the Reddit consensus is consistently sceptical of paid YouTube/Telegram MRCEM “courses”. The free content is now strong enough that you should treat any paid YouTube package as a luxury, not a necessity.

Which free YouTube channels are actually worth subscribing to?

Three free channels do most of the heavy lifting for MRCEM specifically:

• Go Emergency Medicine — “Tips for MRCEM OSCE” playlist, plus exam-tactic shorts (search YouTube for “MRCEM OSCE top tip”). UK-focused, candidate-perspective.
• RCEMLearning’s own YouTube channel — free clinical case walkthroughs and podcast video versions.
• Geeky Medics — not MRCEM-specific but the OSCE technique videos transfer 1:1.

Honourable mentions: EMCrit (Scott Weingart) for crit-care depth; EM3 YouTube for UK-flavoured short teaching pieces; Strong Medicine for physiology refreshers if you are still on Primary.

How do I build a free-only study plan that actually works?

A realistic free-only study plan, assuming 12–16 weeks to the exam and roughly 8–12 hours a week:

1. Week 1. Download the current RCEM exam blueprint and SLO list. Map every SLO to one of the resources in the table above. Do not write content of your own — just decide which free resource will cover which SLO.
2. Weeks 2–6. Content acquisition phase. Work through LITFL / RCEMLearning / NICE / Resus Council, one body system at a time. Make brief Anki cards (or use the Gandolfi deck) as you go.
3. Weeks 7–10. Question phase. Use whatever free question banks you have (RCEMLearning SBAs, Pastest free trial, MRCEM Success free questions, MRCEM Exam Prep starter pack). Aim for 30–50 questions a day with full review.
4. Weeks 11–14. Weakness phase. Go back through every question you got wrong, link it to a LITFL/St Emlyn’s/NICE page, and Anki it.
5. Final two weeks. Timed mock papers under exam conditions. For OSCE candidates: daily timed Geeky Medics stations with a partner.

If you have RCEM membership already, RCEMLearning’s SBA Revise should sit at the centre of weeks 7–14. If you do not, the combination of LITFL + NICE + community Anki deck + free trials of one or two paid banks is still enough to pass — thousands of trainees, particularly IMGs early in their UK career, have done exactly that.

What free resources should I avoid wasting time on?

A short blunt list. None of these is a scam, but for MRCEM revision specifically, the time-to-value is poor:

• Random Telegram “MRCEM” channels. Quality is wildly inconsistent and many recycle paid bank questions illegally — not worth the risk to your account or your study time.
• Pre-2022 OSCE practice videos. The OSCE format changed in November 2022 to 16 stations with domain-based scoring. Older walkthroughs use the wrong format.
• Generic USMLE Anki decks. Brilliant for some basic sciences, but the clinical management answers are American — you will get UK-specific SBAs wrong if you trust them.
• Pre-2024 NICE guideline summaries on third-party blogs. Several major NICE guidelines (sepsis, asthma, AF) have been updated; go to the source.
• Long Facebook study-group debate threads. Useful for emotional support, terrible per-minute as content.

Frequently asked questions

Is RCEMLearning genuinely free?

Partly. Blogs, podcasts and a slice of clinical cases are open-access. The exam-prep content (MRCEM Practice, SBA Revise, SBA Explained, learning sessions, CPD diary) requires an RCEM membership login. RCEM membership for a Member by Examination is £375 for 2026. If you are sitting the exam you almost certainly need to be a member anyway, so treat RCEMLearning as included.

Can I pass MRCEM Primary using only free resources?

Yes, but it is harder. Most candidates who do it combine an Anki community deck, TeachMeAnatomy, BNF, RCEMLearning Primary practice, free trials of Pastest or MRCEM Success for question rhythm, and one borrowed textbook (Boon or Ganong) from a library. Allow more weeks than the typical 12 if you are going fully free.

Are paid question banks worth it on top of free resources?

For most candidates, yes — one paid SBA bank (MRCEM Success, Pastest or BMJ OnExamination) is the single highest-yield paid resource. Aim to do free resources first, then add one paid bank for the final 6–8 weeks if you can afford it. Do not buy two paid banks; the marginal return is poor.

Are there free MRCEM Anki decks I can trust?

The Gandolfi Emergency Medicine FRCEM / MRCEM deck (free on AnkiWeb) is the most established. It is not perfect — expect to suspend a few cards and tweak others — but it is comprehensive and free. Some IMG-focused study groups share newer decks, but always cross-check the answer against a primary source (LITFL, NICE, BNF) before trusting it.

Is LITFL still maintained in 2026?

Yes. LITFL continues to publish weekly and the ECG, CCC and tox libraries are actively updated. For MRCEM purposes the existing back catalogue is already more than enough; new posts are a bonus.

Do I need to be in the UK to use these free resources?

Most are accessible globally. The exceptions are NHS-funded resources (BNF, TOXBASE, e-LfH, MicroGuide) which need an NHS-affiliated login. RCEMLearning is accessible internationally once you have RCEM membership, regardless of where you work.

What about free OSCE practice partners if I am working solo?

Two free options: pair up via the MRCEM candidate WhatsApp groups (ask on r/doctorsUK or the Facebook MRCEM groups), or use Geeky Medics’ AI virtual patients for solo practice. Neither replaces a human partner, but both keep you sharp between sessions.

How recent should my free resources be?

For pharmacology and guidelines (NICE, Resus Council UK, sepsis pathways) always use the live source — not a third-party summary — because they change. For anatomy and physiology, older textbooks and resources are fine. For SBA and OSCE format and weighting, only trust RCEM’s own current exam information page; the OSCE format changed in late 2022 and the SBA blueprint was last refreshed in the 2021 curriculum update.

Is it worth subscribing to a paid course instead of using free resources?

Most candidates do not need to. Paid courses (Bromley, Dr Aamir, the various commercial OSCE bootcamps) buy you structured timetabling, in-person feedback and exam-day rehearsal. If you have the money and limited time, they help. If you have time and discipline, free resources plus a study partner deliver the same outcome.

How long before the exam should I start using free resources?

For Primary or SBA: 12–16 weeks. For OSCE: 8–10 weeks of deliberate practice, on top of routine clinical work. Free resources reward consistency more than intensity — an hour a day for 12 weeks beats six hours a day for two weeks.

Will free resources alone get me through if English is my second language?

For Primary and SBA, yes — the language load is identical to paid resources. For OSCE, free resources help but communication-skills feedback from a UK-trained partner or supervisor is invaluable. Many IMGs combine free OSCE content with one cheap in-person mock day rather than a full paid course.

What is the next step?

Once you have the free spine in place, the highest-yield single addition is structured, exam-style practice mapped to the current RCEM blueprint. Our MRCEM and FRCEM mock papers, OSCE stations and curriculum-mapped feedback are designed to slot directly on top of the free resources above. Start a mock at emfinalexams.com and use your free resources to fix the gaps it surfaces.

Facts last verified 30 May 2026. Subscription fees, login models and platform availability change; if you spot a resource that has moved tier since this date, please flag it via the contact link at the bottom of this page.

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