Final FRCR Part A explained: format, curriculum areas, and how to revise it

Final FRCR Part A is two papers of 120 single best answer questions each, three hours per paper, five options throughout. Every question is text only, with no image.

That is a deliberate design choice rather than an omission. Image interpretation is tested elsewhere, in the practical stages of the FRCR. Part A instead tests the reasoning that sits behind a report — the clinical context, the differential, the next appropriate step — stripped of the image so a candidate cannot pattern-match a picture and has to reason from the stem.

The exam is built to the RCR's own 2021 Clinical Radiology Curriculum, which organises the specialty into eleven systems-based areas: breast, cardiac, thoracic, gastro-intestinal, molecular imaging and radionuclide radiology, paediatric, musculoskeletal, neuroradiology, head and neck, uro-gynaecological, and core interventional radiology.

This eleven-area structure is deliberately not the six-module split that circulates in some revision guides. That six-module version is not something the RCR publishes; the eleven areas above are the curriculum's own attachments, and are the structure worth revising to.

The RCR publishes no per-area question distribution for Part A. There is no official figure stating that, say, thoracic radiology carries more marks than head and neck. Because of that, every area is shown at the same weight on this site rather than given an invented differential — the chart says what is examined, not how heavily any one area is weighted against another.

The practical consequence is the opposite of an exam like MRCS Part A, where a published weighting tells you where to spend more time. Here, the honest plan is even coverage across all eleven areas, because no college figure justifies favouring one over another.

• Cover all eleven curriculum areas rather than concentrating on a subset, since no published weighting favours any one of them.
• Practise reasoning from the stem alone, since there is no image to lean on — work the differential and the next step the way the text-only format demands.
• Track which of the eleven areas is currently costing you marks and tilt sessions there, even though the paper itself does not weight them unevenly.
• Bring misses back on a spacing schedule so a wrong answer is met again before it is forgotten.

The SpecialityMCQs Final FRCR Part A revision covers the RCR's own eleven curriculum areas at even weight, since no college figure justifies otherwise, and tilts each session toward whichever area is currently weakest. Every question is text only, in the reasoning-not-recognition style the real paper uses, and every answer names the reference or guideline it rests on.