About
Built for the gaps between cases.
FRCS.app is the home of a family of independent revision sites for the written exams of UK surgical training — built on one platform, held to one standard, and honest about what that standard is.
Independent — not affiliated with or endorsed by the JCIE, the ICBSE or the Royal Colleges of Surgeons.
01Why it exists
Revision is a design problem, not a volume problem.
Surgical exams are taken by people with very little spare time. Revision happens in fragments — on a night shift, between theatre cases, on the train to clinic — and usually on a phone. The question is not whether a trainee has access to enough questions; it’s whether the minutes they do have go to the right ones.
A score answers a different question. It counts what you’ve done and reports a percentage — and a percentage can’t tell a lucky guess from real knowledge, or an honest gap from a confident misconception: the wrong belief you’d defend in a viva and act on in theatre. Those are the errors worth finding first.
So we built the opposite: questions written to the shape of the real paper, explanations that cite current UK guidance and say why each wrong option is wrong, a confidence rating on every answer, and an engine that brings back what you miss until it sticks — five minutes at a time if that’s what the day allows.
And we built it once. Every exam runs on the same platform, so a better analytics view or a faster question screen reaches every specialty at the same time, and opening a new specialty means writing questions rather than writing software. That’s why FRCS.app exists: one front door to 4 exams today and 11 in time.
02What we hold to
Four principles, on every site.
Shaped like the exam
Original single best answer questions written to the structure of the published sample papers — lean vignettes, plausible distractors, one defensible best answer — and mocks that run to the real format and timing.
Referenced, and honest about it
Every explanation ends with its source: NICE, the specialty associations, landmark trials and standard texts. Specialist review is ongoing and published openly on each site, never claimed in advance.
Built on learning science
Retrieval practice, spaced repetition and confidence calibration — so the hours you have go to the topics that need them, not the ones you already know.
Fair by default
Free to start with no card. Monthly plans you can cancel, one-off 3- and 6-month passes that never auto-renew, and a full refund within 14 days if you’ve attempted fewer than 20 questions.
03Editorial standards
What we claim, and what we don’t.
Every question is original. Items are written to the structure of the published sample papers — a lean vignette, five options from the same category, one best answer — and nothing is recalled from, or endorsed by, the examinations.
Every explanation is referenced. It ends with its source: NICE, the specialty associations, landmark trials or standard texts, so you can check it and go further.
Review is published, not presumed. Specialist clinical review is ongoing. Rather than claim sign-off in advance, each site’s editorial page says which sections have had it.
Errors are corrected in the open. Anyone can report a problem through the contact form, and corrections are made promptly. The questions are written for revision and have not been through a formal standard-setting process; they are not a substitute for clinical judgement or current guidelines.
Read each site’s standards: mrcs.app/editorial, frcsgensurg.app/editorial, frcsplast.app/editorial, frcsorth.app/editorial.
04Who runs it
Independent, and staying that way.
FRCS.app and its sister sites are run by CIEL Ventures Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 13590557).
We are independent of, and not endorsed by, the JCIE, the ICBSE, the Royal Colleges of Surgeons or any examining body. We carry no advertising and sell no data, and we don’t share learning data with employers, deaneries or examining bodies.
MRCS Part Amrcs.app · Core surgical trainees, foundation doctors and international medical graduates
FRCS (Gen Surg) Section 1frcsgensurg.app · General surgery registrars
FRCS (Plast) Section 1frcsplast.app · Plastic surgery registrars and fellows
FRCS (Tr & Orth) Section 1frcsorth.app · Trauma and orthopaedic registrars
05Get in touch
Questions, corrections, ideas.
There’s no public email address — every message comes through one form and reaches the people who write and build the sites. We usually reply within two working days.
Reporting an error in a question? Choose “A question or explanation” as the topic and include a few words of the stem, so we can find it quickly.
Try before you trust
Start with twenty free questions.
Every site has twenty single best answer questions with full, referenced explanations — no account and no card. Pick your exam: