Most GP trainees who underperform in the MRCGP AKT are not short on knowledge. That is the pattern I keep seeing, sitting after sitting, having taught AKT preparation for well over a decade and worked through this exam with thousands of GP trainees. Candidates revise for months, cover an enormous volume of material, and still lose marks in the same handful of places. None of the five mistakes below are about how much a candidate knows. They are about technique, structure and where attention gets placed during revision, and all five are fixable with a few weeks of deliberate attention rather than a few more months of general reading. Here they are, in the order they tend to do the most damage. – Join National AKT WhatsApp Teaching Group here – Get AKT Updates and Teaching Emails here – Register for next Free AKT Webinar here
After every MRCGP AKT sitting, the RCGP publishes a short feedback report. Sadly most GP trainees never read one until someone mentions it to them. That is a shame, because these reports are one of the few places where the people who write and review the AKT tell you, in their own words, what is going well and what keeps catching candidates out. This page exists to make that information easier to use. It is reviewed and updated after every AKT sitting, in January, April, July and October, so you can come back to it as your own exam approaches rather than treating it as a one-off read. Below you will find what the reports actually are, what the most recent sitting showed, the patterns that keep resurfacing across several sittings in a row, and how to turn that into something useful for your revision rather than something to worry about. A note before we start. None of this is about predicting questions, and it should not be read that way. The RCGP is explicit that AKT content is reviewed and replaced on an ongoing basis, and that trying to use recalled or memorised questions is both against the rules and poor preparation, since the exam tests applied reasoning rather than recall. What follows is a summary of the themes RCGP itself has chosen to publish, written up so they are easier to act on. – Join National AKT WhatsApp Teaching Group here – Get AKT Updates and Teaching Emails here – Register for next Free AKT Webinar here
If you are an international medical graduate, the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026 has probably reached you in some form – a headline, a message in a WhatsApp group, a conversation with a colleague who is equally uncertain, or a quiet worry that surfaced while you were in the middle of revision. Whatever brought you here, you deserve a clear, honest account of what this law actually says. Not the most alarming version. Not the most reassuring version. Just what it says, what it changes, and what it does not change. This blog does not tell you what decision to make about your career. That is yours, and it depends on your personal circumstances, your stage of training, your immigration status and your goals. What it tries to do is give you an accurate foundation from which to think clearly, at a moment when clarity is genuinely hard to find. Last updated: June 2026. We will update this page as the guidance develops – particularly around the 2027 changes, which are still being finalised.
If you have searched for “audit ideas for GP training” or “QIP ideas for GP registrars,” you are not alone. It comes up on GP trainee forums and social media groups constantly – and it is one of the most common questions GP trainees ask when they start a new primary care post. But here is something worth knowing before you start: the RCGP no longer requires a clinical audit as a named portfolio requirement. What you actually need to complete in GP training is a Quality Improvement Project – the QIP – and a Quality Improvement Activity, the QIA, in every year of training. This matters because audit and quality improvement are related but not the same, and submitting something that looks like an audit without the improvement framework behind it may not satisfy what your ARCP panel is looking for. This blog explains exactly what the QIP and QIA requirements are for GP trainees, how they differ from each other, what your supervisor assesses you against, and – because it is the question asked most often – gives you a detailed list of quality improvement project ideas that work well in primary care, with notes on which are better suited to a full QIP versus the smaller annual QIA. – Join National AKT WhatsApp teaching group here – Join National SCA WhatsApp teaching group here – For GP trainee update and teaching emails click here – For MRCGP AKT Preparation click here – For MRCGP SCA Preparation click here
