Hi, I'm Vickie.

Just Vickie - Emergency Medicine is a lovely, friendly, non-hierarchical specialty. We're all colleagues here. Some of us just have more experience and a few extra letters after our name.

I'm a UK Emergency Medicine specialist (CCT complete, on the GMC Specialist Register, GMC 7134119). After CCT I did some locum consultant shifts in my own ED, but I didn't take a substantive post. I'd been quietly, persistently furious about how badly served FRCEM Final candidates are after a fail - I'd lived it, I knew what was missing, and I knew it wasn't going to happen in the spare hours of a full-time consultant job.

So I made a deliberate choice: stepped out of UK clinical work, moved overseas, and put all of my professional time into building FRCEM Mentor. It's a real sacrifice - clinical income, clinical rhythm, the daily texture of EM I love - and I'm making it because I think this matters and it deserves the space to be done properly.

To keep things straight: I'm on the staff bank at Darent Valley Hospital but I'm not currently doing UK shifts - I'm overseas and unable to work clinically here. I keep up to date with UK practice and will return to clinical work when I'm back. Until then, this is the work - the question bank, the writing, and the doctors I coach.

I've always liked the scenic route

I came to medicine as a second career. My first degree was an MA (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh, completed in 1996. Despite the popular myth, psychology doesn't teach you "how people think" - but it taught me a lot about communication, and about the plasticity and malleability of the brain, my own included. That second part has turned out to be quietly central to how I coach.

After Edinburgh I spent years in the fashion industry - real management experience and transferable skills I still draw on most weeks.

I came to medicine in my thirties: MBChB at the University of Glasgow in 2011, foundation in London (Whipps Cross and the Royal London), higher specialty training across NW London - Northwick Park, Chelsea & Westminster, Charing Cross, St Mary's - then KSS Deanery and Darent Valley Hospital. Locumed across London throughout. CCT and FRCEM at the end of it.

In Vickie's words

My path through Emergency Medicine has not been a straight line. Time out. A child. Part-time training. Family commitments stacked on top of on-calls, mocks and night shifts. If you've ever felt the official 'just dedicate two hours a day to revision' advice was written for someone with a different life - I get it.

Training timeline

Why any of this matters for the doctor I coach

I think this is the most important thing on this page, so I'd rather say it plainly than dress it up.

During training I took time out, had a child, worked part-time, juggled family commitments alongside on-calls and mocks, and sat exams while trying not to fall asleep on the sofa with a textbook on my chest. I failed FRCEM Final more times than the average candidate. I also passed it.

If you're reading this and you're a parent, a carer, an IMG starting again, a career-changer, someone who's failed once, twice, four times - this is the kind of doctor you're getting when you work with me. Not the version of an exam coach who breezed through on the first attempt. The version who knows exactly which week of the revision plan everything tends to fall apart, because mine did, repeatedly, and I learned what to do about it.

Why I built FRCEM Mentor

The honest version is in three parts: the exam tested something I wasn't prepared for, the help I tried to find didn't fit, and once I worked it out I didn't want anyone else to spend two years figuring it out on their own.

The exam asks something specific - and it took me a long time to see it

I sat one of the early iterations of the FRCEM Final SBA, before there were question banks built for it. I've always learned by doing questions - that's just how I revise. So when the SBA arrived without a tailored bank, I floundered.

In Vickie's words

I'd come out of the exam, look up the answers afterwards, and even then I couldn't tell what answer they were looking for. That's a very specific kind of stuck. It's not a knowledge problem. It's not a 'work harder' problem. It's a problem with how the exam tests, and you can't fix it by reading another textbook.

This is the thing I want anyone reading this to understand: volume of practice questions is not the answer. Other banks have lots of questions, and practising matters - of course it does. But what makes the difference for FRCEM Final is focus and realism - questions that mirror how this specific exam actually tests. I know that from sitting it multiple times.

The help I tried to find didn't fit

I went looking for coaching specifically about how to approach the questions. I tried the Physician Support Unit, who suggested I get tested for dyslexia - extra time can be enormous if a learning difference is the bottleneck, and many high-achievers mask these things until very late. Late ADHD diagnoses are common in EM, and a formal diagnosis can genuinely buy you the time and reasonable adjustments you need.

I want to be respectful here, because those routes are real and important. They just weren't my problem. I knew the answer to the question before I read the answer choices - what I couldn't do was reverse-engineer which option the College wanted. That's a technique problem, not a processing-time problem.

I also tried generic exam coaching. It fell flat. The coach didn't know this exam - its specific traps, the way the stems are written, the questions that look like one thing and test another. Without that, the advice was generic ("do more questions, manage your stress, draw a timeline") and I'd already done all of that.

One person changed everything for me. They had taken the exam. They knew where it bites. They reframed how I read the stem, how I handled distractors, how I budgeted time. Within weeks my mock scores looked different. That is the kind of coaching FRCEM Mentor is built around.

And then there was the silence

I failed FRCEM Final multiple times. In all that time, the College never once reached out - no email saying "we noticed, here's what's available, here's a person you could speak to." The pastoral support for repeat candidates simply did not exist. The Physician Support Unit offered a diagnostic angle. A generic coach offered generic advice. The College offered silence.

I built FRCEM Mentor because the doctor sitting in their car after a fourth fail email - the one I used to be - should not have to assemble their own support out of fragments.

What I actually offer

I'd rather under-promise here than over-promise, so two things only:

• A targeted question bank - over 1,000 SBAs with detailed explanations, mapped to the SLO blueprint. Built for focus and exam-realism, not volume for the sake of it.
• 1:1 coaching - direct work with me on technique, the question stems, your specific gaps. Particularly useful if you've sat the exam before. If a tailored revision plan is what would help you, I'll build one for you as part of coaching - but I'd rather meet you and work out what you actually need than sell you a fixed plan you might not.

If you've just failed, or you're heading into a retake, my How to Pass FRCEM Final post is the most honest place to start.

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