I'm sitting Part 2B in October and feeling reasonably confident on the rapid reporting but the viva is where I'm most anxious. I passed Part 2A on my second attempt with 67% last year, so I know I can handle written material, but the viva format is just different – you can't go back and change an answer and the examiners' follow-up questions are unpredictable. I've got 8 weeks and I want to use them well.
My current routine is about 2 hours of rapid reporting daily and one mock viva session per week with a registrar colleague. The mocks have been helpful but I'm not sure I'm being pushed hard enough since my colleague is also preparing for Part 2B. I'm trying to find a consultant willing to do a proper mock with realistic follow-up questions, but most are too busy to commit to multiple sessions.
The systems I'm least confident on are hepatobiliary and musculoskeletal – MSK especially since my current post is chest-heavy and I don't see a lot of MSK day to day. I know the classic findings but I'd struggle if an examiner pushed me into rarer differentials or asked me to justify management in detail. I've been using Grainger and Teaching Files mainly.
Is 8 weeks realistically enough to cover weak areas without sacrificing the strong ones? I'm wondering if I should accept being “good enough” in MSK and focus on shoring up hepatobiliary instead since that shows up more reliably in the rapid reporting component too.
On the MSK vs hepatobiliary question – I'd cover both but lean toward hepatobiliary given how frequently it appears. For MSK, know the pattern of the big entities well enough to reach the right differential even if you can't go three levels deep. The examiners want to see your clinical reasoning process is sound, not that you've memorized every rare variant.
The rapid reporting time pressure is real and consistent daily practice is the only thing that helps. I did 30 images timed at 30 seconds each every single day for my final 6 weeks. My accuracy at the end was probably 78% vs 61% on a comparable image set at the start, so the volume does move the needle.
I found a consultant through my deanery who agreed to two mock viva sessions at 4 weeks and 2 weeks out. The first session was humbling – I knew the answers but couldn't deliver them under pressure. The second was dramatically better just from having been through it once.
My actual examiners were quite warm compared to what I'd feared going in.
8 weeks is enough if you're structured. The candidates who struggle in the viva aren't usually the ones who don't know the material – it's the ones who freeze when pushed and can't articulate their reasoning out loud. Speaking your thought process daily, even to yourself, makes a bigger difference than another hour of reading.