A new MRCPCH Clinical experience is coming

At the end of September, we’ll be introducing a completely rebuilt Pastest MRCPCH Clinical experience.

The update will bring your MRCPCH Clinical resources together in a clearer, more connected workspace, making it easier to move between different types of revision, keep your own notes and understand how your preparation is progressing.

Whether you’re working through patient cases, building your clinical knowledge with teaching cases, practising spot diagnoses or using flashcards for quick recall, the new experience will be designed to help you manage your clinical exam preparation more effectively.

What will be changing?

The new MRCPCH Clinical product will bring several improvements to the way you study:

• Teaching Cases, Patient Cases, Spot Diagnosis and Flashcards will be accessible from one side panel.
• You’ll be able to switch between different resources while keeping your Notes open in your main workspace.
• Most Cases will include short quiz questions, giving you more opportunities to check your understanding as you study.
• A new Insights area will help you see how much you’ve completed and where you’re performing well.
• Improved progress and performance tracking will give you a clearer picture of your preparation.

The new version will be a rebuilt MRCPCH Clinical product rather than an update applied to the existing product.

Everything you need from one side panel

One of the biggest changes will be the way your MRCPCH Clinical resources are organised.

Instead of navigating between different areas of the product, your main learning resources will be available from a side panel alongside your main study workspace.

Teaching Cases

Teaching Cases will help you build the underlying clinical knowledge and reasoning required for the MRCPCH Clinical exam.

You’ll be able to use them to review important conditions and presentations, consider differential diagnoses and develop the clinical reasoning needed when approaching children and young people in an exam setting.

Patient Cases

Patient Cases will give you the opportunity to apply your knowledge to more exam-focused clinical scenarios.

You'll be able to work through presentations in a structured way and consider the clinical findings, diagnosis and wider discussion points you might encounter during the exam.

Existing Case Extras, including images, sounds and examiner documents, will continue to be available, alongside topic summaries and top tips. Cases will also include short quizzes where available, allowing you to test the diagnosis and related knowledge as you work through them.

Spot Diagnosis

Spot Diagnosis will provide focused practice in recognising important clinical signs and presentations.

This will give you a quick way of developing your visual recognition skills and becoming more confident identifying key findings.

Flashcards

Flashcards will continue to provide a quicker way of revising important exam-relevant information.

They'll be particularly useful for reinforcing knowledge you've already covered or fitting shorter revision sessions around your other preparation.

Keep your Notes alongside your revision

The new layout will make it much easier to build your own revision notes while using Pastest.

Your Notes will remain available in the main workspace while you access learning materials through the side panel.

This means you’ll be able to work through a Patient Case, check a Teaching Case, review a Flashcard or practise a Spot Diagnosis while continuing to add to your own notes.

Over time, this should help you create a more useful personal record of the areas you've covered and the points you want to remember before your exam.

Test your understanding as you go

Most Cases will also include quiz questions.

Rather than only reading through the material, you'll have regular opportunities to check whether you've understood the important learning points and identify areas that may need further revision.

Your answers will also contribute towards the progress and performance information available within the new product.

See your progress with Insights

The new MRCPCH Clinical experience will also introduce an Insights section.

Clinical exam preparation isn't simply about achieving a particular percentage score, so Insights will be designed to give you an indication of your progress rather than predict how you'll perform in the real exam.

You'll be able to use it to understand things such as:

• How many Cases you've completed
• Which areas you've spent the most time preparing for
• Where you're performing particularly well
• Which areas could benefit from some additional revision

By combining your activity and quiz performance, Insights will give you another way to decide where to focus your preparation next.

Why are we making these changes?

Preparing for MRCPCH Clinical requires a different approach from preparing for a written exam.

You'll need to combine clinical knowledge with examination skills, communication, recognition of clinical signs and the ability to work through a case in a structured way.

We're rebuilding the MRCPCH Clinical product to better support that type of preparation.

Our aim is to make it easier to move between different forms of revision, test your knowledge as you go, maintain useful notes and get a clearer picture of how your preparation is developing.

What will happen if I'm already using MRCPCH Clinical?

Because this will be a newly rebuilt product, your progress from the existing MRCPCH Clinical product will not transfer to the new version.

We appreciate that this may be important if you've already completed a significant amount of revision, particularly if your exam is approaching.

For this reason, there will be a transition period where existing users who need to continue using the old MRCPCH Clinical product will be able to reactivate access through the Manage Exams area of their Pastest account.

We'll provide more information about this as the new product becomes available.

How will I access the old MRCPCH Clinical product?

Once the new experience launches, if you need temporary access to the previous version, you'll be able to:

1. Go to Manage Exams in your Pastest account.
2. Find your old MRCPCH Clinical product.
3. Select the option to Reactivate your access.
4. Following the purchase, continue using the previous product during the available transition period.

This option will be there to provide continuity for users who need a little more time before moving across to the new experience.

The old MRCPCH Clinical product will be phased out by the end of 2026, so we will recommend moving across to the new version for your ongoing revision.

What do I need to do now?

For the moment, nothing will change.

You can continue using your existing MRCPCH Clinical product as normal.

The new experience will be introduced at the end of September, and we'll provide more information when it's ready.

Once available, we’ll recommend starting to use the new product for your ongoing preparation so you can take advantage of the improved layout, integrated Notes, quizzes, progress tracking and Insights.

In summary

A completely rebuilt Pastest MRCPCH Clinical experience will be arriving at the end of September.

It will bring Teaching Cases, Patient Cases, Spot Diagnosis and Flashcards together within a new side-panel experience, while allowing you to keep your Notes available as you study. Most Cases will include questions to help reinforce your knowledge, while the new Insights section will give you a clearer view of your activity and performance.

Because this will be a new product, existing progress won't transfer across. However, we'll provide a transition period for users who need temporary access to the previous MRCPCH Clinical experience.

There's nothing you need to do yet – we'll let you know when the new experience is ready.