Best of Five MCQs for MRCPsych Paper 3

Lena Palaniyappan & Rajeev Krishnadas Oxford University Press, 2010, £ 24.95 pb, 224 pp. ISBN 9780199553617

How to Pass the MRCPsych CASC

Andrew Iles, Rose Woodall & Flavia Leslie Oxford University Press, 2010, £24.95 pb, 232 pp. ISBN 9780199571703

Candidates studying for MRCPsych examinations are on a quest for their Holy Grail revision book. Many invest their faith in one specific tome, hoping its contents hold the secret to a pass mark. The advent of the new style MRCPsych examinations knocked most contenders from their pedestals and rendered many obsolete. As publishers sensed the opportunity, a new generation of MRCPsych books has burst onto the market. The quest is on for the new Holy Grail.

The Best of Five MCQs for MRCPsych Paper 3 is a real contender. The book starts well, with practical advice on exam preparation and what to expect on the day, including pragmatic exam technique suggestions (if in doubt, tick ‘C’, apparently). The main focus is an excellent bank of 450 MCQs: clear, varied and logically presented, with 50 questions for each subspecialty. A particular strength is the ‘Basic Statistics’ section, nicely targeting the required critical appraisal skills. However, the key to useful MCQ revision material is really the answers and here this book excels, providing detailed explanations, each referenced to facilitate further reading. It is a shame the book lacks a final section of mixed subject MCQs to provide more of an exam experience, but this is an efficient, user-friendly, and well-researched addition to the MRCPsych arsenal.

Those who embraced The Best of 5 MCQs may gravitate to the publisher's ‘sequel’, How to Pass the MRCPsych CASC, but they could find themselves disappointed. In contrast to the standard CASC revision format, the authors first describe relevant skills and knowledge, and then present ten mock examinations with very general pointers; candidates must refer to the preceding skills sections to piece together model answers. The approach removes the pitfall of biasing general theory to specific scenarios. However, inconveniently, the scenarios do not provide references to relevant pages, leading to much flicking forwards and backwards - an easily avoidable waste of time that reduces the user-friendliness of this book. Furthermore, the layout of the skills section is bizarrely unformatted: it lacks spacing or use of bold type, and consists of excessively concise lists of information in tiny print, rather like reading a copy of a previous candidate's notes. The content is good, but difficult to process. The CASC revision group with whom I trialled this book found that they could not use it effectively to act or assess mock scenarios, the format made the information hard to visualise and memorise, the layout was illogical, and they felt insufficient theoretical information was provided, although they valued the useful phrase suggestions and the introduction describing the practicalities of the examination. How to Pass the MRCPsych CASC is a book that may work better for individual study. It assumes a high level of pre-existing knowledge, and candidates may find it most useful in combination with more detailed revision material. The quest for the Holy Grail continues…