Two years, and around eighty candidates who told us what was wrong with it
Preparing for the ORE or LDS Part 1 usually means several textbooks, a folder of PDFs and
a question bank that tells you the answer without telling you why. This is an attempt at
the alternative — built first for ORE Part 1 and now covering the LDS route as well,
and not designed in one go: it was corrected again and again by the people sitting the exams.
How it was built
Built, given away, criticised, rebuilt
Work started 2 years ago. Rather than launch it,
we gave it to candidates who were actually sitting the paper — around eighty of them
across the last 3 ORE Part 1 sittings — and asked them to tell us what did not
work.
Some of what came back was small: a screen that was confusing, a
subject that needed more questions. Some of it changed the product. The weakness report
exists because candidates kept saying they did not know what to revise next. The two-week
plan and the 72-hour pass exist because they said the last fortnight was where their
preparation fell apart. The mock exam gives no feedback until you submit because they said a
quiz that corrects you as you go cannot tell you whether you are ready.
Each sitting, the next group got a better version than the one
before. That is the whole method, and it is why this went on sale 2 years after it was
started rather than three months after.
2
Years in the making
80
Candidates before launch
3
Sittings it was tested across
9
Countries they wrote from
What we were trying to fix
Almost everybody sitting Part 1 is a working dentist several time zones from any classroom.
The way this exam is usually taught does not fit that life, and the candidates who tested this
said so in almost identical words, sitting after sitting.
What they were putting up with
Two- and three-hour live lectures, at a time set by somebody else and usually somebody else's time zone.
Missing one and then asking for the recording — and waiting for it.
Paying heavily for hundreds of hours of material, then having no idea which of it is the part you actually need.
A question sent to a mentor on Tuesday and answered on Friday, by which point you have moved on or given up on it.
No way of knowing whether you are ready until the results come out.
What we built instead
Open at two in the morning or ten minutes between patients. There is nothing to attend and nothing to miss.
The whole syllabus written out, so nothing has to be watched twice to be understood.
The portal tells you what to study next, worked out from the questions you have actually got wrong.
Every question explains itself — why the right answer is right and why each wrong one is wrong — so the answer arrives with the question, not on Friday. A mentor in the study group takes what is left.
A free mock exam that gives you a mark and a weakness breakdown before you have paid anything.
The principle underneath all of it: the candidate is in charge. Nobody knows how much
time you have this week, which subjects frighten you, or whether tonight is a two-hour night or
a twenty-minute one. So the portal does not decide those things. It does the part that is
genuinely hard to do alone — telling you, from the questions you have actually got wrong,
what to study next.
Three things, joined together. A question bank large enough that you are not
re-answering the same items in week three. A revision guide covering the whole syllabus, so
that when a question exposes a gap there is somewhere to go and read. And a link between
them, so reading and testing are one activity rather than two.
The material is checked against current UK guidance — the BDA, SDCEP, the BNF,
Delivering Better Oral Health, Resuscitation Council UK, NICE, HTM 01-05 and IRR17 — and
where recent guidance contradicts what older revision material teaches, the guide says so
explicitly rather than quietly presenting the new version.
What we are not
We are independent of the General Dental Council, the Royal Colleges and every examining
body. We do not see the papers, we have no relationship with the examiners, and nobody can
tell you what will come up. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Passing an examination is also not the same as finding work. The GDC is explicit that
success in the ORE does not mean you will automatically secure a job in UK dentistry.
How a topic gets written
The same four steps every time, which is what makes 337 topics consistent
rather than 337 separate opinions.
The syllabus point is mapped to the UK guidance that governs it — the named source,
not a textbook's summary of it.
The topic is drafted against that source, with doses, classifications and thresholds
set in tables rather than buried in prose, because that is how they are recalled under
time pressure.
Every figure is checked back against that source and dated. Where a current UK source
will not confirm something, it is left out rather than guessed at.
Questions are written against the same source and linked to the topic, so a wrong
answer is one tap from the paragraph that explains it.
How the guidance is kept current
Perishable figures — doses, thresholds, intervals, fees — are dated and re-checked. When
a guideline changes, the entry says what changed and when, because a candidate revising from
an older source needs to know the difference, not just the current answer.
Mistakes get through. When one is reported it is fixed and the correction goes out to
everyone with access, because there is one copy of the material rather than a PDF somebody
downloaded in March. Corrections are the most useful message we get and we would rather have
them than not.
What we will not claim
We do not publish a pass rate. We cannot verify what happens in an examination hall, and
nor can anybody else selling you material — a figure nobody can audit is not evidence, it is
decoration. We do not publish reviews we have not received. We do not use countdown clocks
or invented discounts.
What we will do instead is let you look before you buy: a full 100-question mock exam
and a section of the guide, free, so the decision rests on the material rather than on our
adjectives. The 50% line we mark it against is ours, and is labelled as ours; the GDC
does not publish the mark you need.
Questions about access, payment or the material go to the contact form on the sign-in
page, and are answered by a person. If you spot something in the guide that is wrong or out
of date, please say — corrections are the most useful message we get.
