Why Spaced Repetition Is the Smartest Way to Revise for the FRCS Part 1
By Ibrahim Ibrahim | ST7 Urology Registrar | FRCS Urol (2025)
When I was preparing for the FRCS Part 1, I made my own flashcards as I went.
Not because someone told me to. Not because I had a structured plan. I did it as I always kept forgetting things. I’d cover a topic, feel confident, move on — and then three days later sit down to revisit it and find the detail had completely gone. So I started writing things down on cards as I went. The facts that kept slipping. The EAU guideline thresholds. The numbers that never seemed to stick.
The problem was time. I was a busy registrar fitting revision around theatre lists, clinics, and on-calls. Writing everything out properly took more time than I had. I couldn’t make cards for everything. And I certainly couldn’t do it at the level of detail the exam actually demands.
What I could do — and what made a real difference — was flick through the ones I had, every single day. At the end of a shift, before bed, on the train. Just the hard ones. The ones I’d marked as not knowing. That daily repetition, even for 15 minutes, compounded in a way that reading notes never did.
That experience is a big part of why SmashUrology now has flashcards built in. Because I wish something like this had existed when I was sitting the exam — 1,516 cards, already written, already at the right level, ready to go.
What Is Spaced Repetition and Why Does It Work?
Spaced repetition is a learning method built around one simple idea: you remember things better when you review them repeatedly over time, at increasing intervals, rather than all at once.
The reason goes back to how memory actually works. We don’t retain information after a single encounter — the brain needs reminders. And crucially, it needs those reminders at the right moment, just before the memory fades. Review something too early and you’re wasting time on something you already know. Leave it too long and it’s gone. Hit it at the right interval and the memory strengthens, the next review gets pushed further out, and gradually the information moves into long-term storage.
This is why cramming feels productive but lets you down on the day. You’re reviewing everything at the same time regardless of what you know or don’t know. Spaced repetition is the opposite — it focuses your time precisely where your memory is weakest.
For a busy registrar with a finite number of revision hours, that focus matters enormously.
Why This Particularly Matters for the FRCS Part 1
The FRCS Part 1 syllabus is broad. Two papers, 240 questions, covering basic science, anatomy, urological oncology, LUTS, andrology, paediatric urology, research statistics — the full JCIE blueprint. The exam sits twice a year, in January and July.
Most trainees have eight to twenty weeks to prepare, around everything else going on in their lives. You simply cannot afford to spend that time re-reading material you’ve already covered just because you’ve forgotten it. Every revision hour needs to count.
That’s what spaced repetition does. Instead of re-reading a chapter, you review a card. Instead of covering an entire topic from scratch, you identify the handful of concepts that haven’t stuck and focus only on those. You move efficiently through a very large syllabus, with your weakest areas getting the most attention.
When I was making my own cards, this is exactly how I used them. I wasn’t flicking through everything every day — just the reds. The ones I kept getting wrong. And slowly, day by day, they moved into the amber pile and then the green.
The Combination That Actually Works
Flashcards alone aren’t enough. Neither is a question bank alone. The combination of the two is what makes the difference.
Here’s the workflow I’d recommend:
1. Do a question bank session on a topic. Work through 20–30 questions. Read the explanations properly. Understand where you went wrong and why — not just what the right answer was.
2. Immediately after, open the flashcards for that topic. Your brain has just been actively engaged with the material. The flashcards will consolidate what you’ve learned rather than introducing it cold.
3. Rate each card honestly. On SmashUrology, you rate yourself Struggling, Managing, or Comfortable after each card. Don’t mark yourself Comfortable on something you vaguely recognised. The system only works if you’re straight with it.
4. Come back to the reds every day. This is the bit most people skip, and it’s the bit that made the biggest difference for me. You don’t need long — 15 minutes at the end of the day, just the cards you marked as Struggling. That daily drip of repetition is worth more than an hour of re-reading.
Over time, the platform tracks your Red, Amber, and Green cards across every topic. You end up with an objective picture of where your gaps are — which is far more useful than a vague sense of what you feel confident about.
Why I Built This Rather Than Just Saying “Use Anki”
Anki is a good tool. The algorithm behind it is solid. But when I talk to trainees about it, the same problem comes up every time: they never actually get started because building the decks takes too long. Same with Quizlet.
You have to source the content yourself. Write the cards. Format them. Make sure they’re at the right level. Keep them up to date with the current guidelines. For someone with limited revision time and a full clinical schedule, that’s a significant barrier — and it often means the flashcards never get made at all.
That was my experience too. I made cards for some topics. Not all of them. And the ones I didn’t make cards for were the ones I was most likely to forget.
SmashUrology has done that work. 1,516 cards, mapped to the full JCIE syllabus, grounded in the EAU Guidelines 2026 and the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Urology 5th Edition. At the level of detail the exam actually tests. You log in, open a topic, and start — no setup, no sourcing, no formatting.
That’s what I wish had existed when I was sitting Part 1. Not a generic flashcard app. A pre-built, FRCS-level card bank, integrated with a question bank, free to use as part of a single subscription.
A Practical Schedule If You’re 8 Weeks Out
If the July sitting is your target, here’s how I’d structure the remaining time:
Weeks 1–4: Systematic topic coverage One topic per week in the question bank. Flashcards immediately after each session. Don’t aim for everything to be green yet — just get through the material and let the platform identify the gaps.
Weeks 5–6: Attack the reds Use your Red and Amber card data to find your weakest topics. Go back into those topics in the question bank, then re-do the flashcards. This is where you’ll feel real momentum — greens accumulating as things start to click.
Weeks 7–8: Consolidation Mixed flashcard review across all topics, daily. Not long sessions — 15 to 20 minutes, focused on anything that’s still red or amber. In parallel, increase your question bank volume to simulate exam conditions.
The week before the exam, I’d stop trying to learn anything new. Flick through the reds. Do some timed questions. Let what you’ve built settle.
Start Now
If you’re sitting in July, you have eight weeks. That’s enough — but only if you start now. The forgetting curve doesn’t pause while you get around to it.
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About the Author
Ibrahim Ibrahim is an ST7 Urology Registrar at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow, and the founder of SmashUrology. He passed the FRCS Urology examination in 2025. SmashUrology was built from his own exam experience to fill a gap in high-quality, guideline-grounded revision resources for urology trainees.