Preparing for the SCA

Deepthi Lavu successfully passed her SCA. Here, she provides her perspective on the experience and top tips for SCA candidates.

Top 10 tips for sitting the SCA

This toolkit is an educational resource developed by the North West England Deanery GP School, and updated for the SCA. It's designed for GP registrars to use, working with their educational supervisors, to prepare for the SCA.

Access the full SCA consultation toolkit

The case information for each consultation will be provided in the reading time before the start of that case. For some cases it may be obvious as to the content of the consultation, but in some cases it will not be. The ‘purpose’ of the consultation may therefore not be apparent in advance.

Cases will reflect real life general practice and are based on real patient consultations. The selected cases in each exam will be those that reflect the prevalence of conditions encountered in General Practice. There may be some cases on clinical areas you will not have encountered in your surgeries but you will have the skills from your workplace consulting as well as your background knowledge in order to complete the case.  

The SCA assesses a sample of general practice capability areas that candidates are expected to have mastered through their workplace-based assessment programme (WPBA). This means the criteria for both examinations (SCA and WPBA) are aligned and transparent. In developing the capability areas of WPBA, a candidate will become familiar with the capabilities assessed in the SCA. It is important to remember that each case will not include all these capability areas. However, they will be covered across the entire examination.

Each SCA examination day will differ, and the twelve cases cannot be predicted in advance. The RCGP will use cases from a bank of hundreds, all of which are mapped to the curriculum.

With thanks to DermNet for providing some of the images used in the SCA candidate materials.

In order to provide a realistic representation of patients in the UK, we make every effort to match role player appearance to the patient descriptions provided in the candidate case notes, including patient ethnicity. However, there may be circumstances where we are unable to cast role players whose appearance fully meets the patient description for that case. In this situation, please approach the case based on the description provided in the candidate case notes, rather than on the appearance of the role player, taking into account any cultural or clinical considerations specific to the patient which are described in the case notes.

Candidates can be assured that role players are trained to accurately portray the medical conditions, cultural contexts, and communication styles specified in each case, regardless of their own background.

A ‘blueprint’ has been developed to ensure the spread of each assessment is representative and not focussed on any one area of practice. The blueprint uses some of the same names as the clinical experience groups in WPBA; these will be familiar to candidates and educators.

This case selection does not represent a ranking of the value or importance of that area to the SCA or to future general practice, and candidates should prepare equally for all groups.

Blueprint list of Clinical Experience Groups:

1. Patient less than 19 years old
2. Gender, reproductive and sexual health, including women's, men's, LGBTQ+, gynae and breast
3. Long-term condition, including cancer, multi-morbidity, and disability
4. Older adults, including frailty and people at the end of life
5. Mental health, including addiction, smoking, alcohol, substance misuse
6. Urgent and unscheduled care
7. Health disadvantage and vulnerabilities, including veterans, mental capacity, safeguarding, and communication difficulties
8. Ethnicity, culture, diversity, inclusivity
9. New presentation of undifferentiated disease
10. Prescribing
11. Investigation / Results
12. Professional conversation / Professional dilemma

RCGP SCA preparation webinars for ST2s and ST3s

We are delighted to launch a free two-part webinar series for RCGP candidates who are preparing to take the SCA exam. The webinars are aimed at ST2 and ST3 members, and we encourage attendance at least three months before you anticipate sitting the SCA.

Find out more about the SCA preparation webinars for ST3s.

We offer preparation courses which have been specifically designed by examiners and GP experts to assist GP registrars in passing the SCA examination. Please note, these courses have delegate fees attached.