EMREE strategy by specialty interest: how to split your time across the seven subjects

The exam is general

EMREE is described as covering seven broad subjects: internal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, surgery, family medicine, psychiatry, and public health with preventive medicine. It does not test only the specialty you want, so a future surgeon is expected to handle psychiatry questions and a future paediatrician to handle surgical emergencies.

Official weighting between subjects is unconfirmed, so avoid plans that depend on knowing it. The subjects and how to study them post lists the map.

Let your baseline lead

Take a mixed set of 40 to 60 questions across all seven subjects in the first week. Your scores tell you which subjects to attack first. Interest in a specialty is a poor guide to your actual strength. The subject you love is often the one you already know well, so extra hours there buy less than the same hours elsewhere.

A common pattern is to give the largest share of time to the two or three lowest-scoring subjects and keep a smaller, steady share for the rest. As an example, a 12-week plan might give weaker subjects four to five weeks between them and strong ones one week each.

Where your intended specialty fits

Your interest does matter in two ways. First, motivation: if you love paediatrics, starting with paediatrics may build momentum. Second, if scores are used competitively for the programme you want, a strong result in the whole exam matters. We cannot say how a particular programme weighs subject scores, and you should ask the programme or read its criteria.

Use your interest to decide the order of subjects, not whether to study them.

Block-by-block priorities

These pointers show what tends to be high yield in each block at exam-prep level, drawn from the common content of the subjects. Always check against your own course material.

• Internal medicine: it is the broadest. Split by system and focus on common presentations, first-line management and complications.
• Surgery: acute abdomen, trauma priorities, peri-operative care and when to operate or observe.
• Paediatrics: growth and development milestones, neonatal problems, immunisation and fever or breathing difficulty in children.
• Obstetrics and gynaecology: antenatal care, obstetric emergencies, contraception and common gynaecological disorders.
• Family medicine: chronic disease, screening and common problems seen in primary care.
• Psychiatry: mood, psychotic and anxiety disorders, first-line drugs and emergencies.
• Public health: study design, bias, screening measures and basic statistics. See biostatistics for EMREE.

Do not abandon the subjects you dislike

The subject you avoid is likely to cost marks on the day. Public health and psychiatry are often delayed because they feel less clinical, yet they respond well to a few focused weeks. A subject that is small, learnable and neglected is where per-hour gains tend to be largest.

Mix subjects as you go

Research on interleaving, such as Kornell and Bjork (2008), suggests that mixing categories can help learners tell them apart, at least in some tasks. In practice, study a block deeply for a week, then end each week with a mixed set that includes older subjects. That keeps old material warm and practises switching between subjects, which the exam demands.

A worked example of an allocation

Suppose your baseline scores are internal medicine 62 percent, surgery 55, paediatrics 70, obstetrics and gynaecology 58, family medicine 72, psychiatry 48 and public health 50. You want to apply for anaesthesia, which is not among the seven subjects. You have twelve weeks. A reasonable allocation: three weeks on internal medicine, since it is broad and your score is middling; two on psychiatry and one on public health, because those are low and learnable; one and a half on surgery and one and a half on obstetrics; and one each on paediatrics and family medicine for upkeep, with mixed sets threading through all weeks.

Your future specialty plays no role in that allocation. It may influence where you start, perhaps with surgery or medicine if you find those motivating, but the time follows the scores. Re-test after four weeks and move hours if the picture has changed.

Using clinical experience to your advantage

Recent graduates and experienced doctors have different advantages. Recent graduates have fresh knowledge of the basic content and the style of student exams. Doctors who have worked for several years know patients and practice but may have forgotten peripheral content. If you are experienced, use questions to find what you have forgotten, and expect to spend more time on subjects far from your daily work. If you have just graduated, spend time on application of knowledge: the first action, the best next step and the safest choice.

A weekly pattern that keeps every subject alive

A good pattern is to give each week a main subject and a shared mixed set. For example, in a week devoted to paediatrics, you might spend four sessions on paediatric topics and one on a mixed set drawn from all seven subjects, plus daily cards. At the end of a block of six weeks, you will have visited each subject deeply once and touched all of them repeatedly. This avoids the trap of forgetting week-two material by week ten and gives you practice at the switching the exam requires, where one question is about a toddler with a fever and the next about an elderly man with a bowel obstruction.

Short notes by specialty goal

These notes are about emphasis, not exclusion. If you are drawn to internal medicine or its subspecialties, expect the exam’s largest block to match your interests, and use the extra time to consolidate your weaker systems. If you favour surgery, remember that the exam tests surgery as a general specialty, so include medicine and paediatrics in your plan. If you lean towards paediatrics or obstetrics and gynaecology, give time to adult medicine because those questions share the exam with yours. If you want psychiatry or family medicine, these subjects reward breadth and care with common conditions, and you should still revise the acute and procedural material. In all cases, the goal is a good overall score.

Reviewing the allocation with mocks

Mock exams are the best check on your allocation, because they show how your subjects behave under time pressure and fatigue. After the first full mock, compare the subject breakdown with your baseline. A subject that improved a lot can lose hours, and one that did not improve needs a different approach, such as more questions, more cards or a different source. Ask yourself whether the problem is knowledge, technique or time, and move hours accordingly.

Keeping a subject notebook

Keep one page per subject with your three biggest gaps, your best rules and a few key facts. Update it after each block. In the last two weeks, these pages become your revision list, and they are far more useful than re-reading textbooks. If you are short of time, this alone is a good use of ten minutes after each set.

Check your allocation every two weeks

Every fortnight, look at your results by subject and move time from subjects that have reached a comfortable level to those still lagging. Performance analytics can show this by domain. If you are still unsure how many weeks you need, read the 12-week plan.

Frequently asked questions