The hardest part of choosing revision resources is not finding them. It is ignoring most of them.
Candidates preparing for the Common Registration Assessment (CRA) are surrounded by options: question banks, revision websites, notes from previous trainees, webinars, PDFs, calculators workbooks, law guides, and group chats full of recommendations. The problem is rarely a shortage of material. It is deciding what actually helps.
Good resources do one of three things. They improve understanding. They improve recall. Or they improve performance under exam conditions. Anything that does none of those is probably just taking up time.
Start with official information first
The General Pharmaceutical Council is the source that matters for assessment structure, dates, and rules. the CRA, is a two-part, time-limited, computer-based assessment. Part 1 contains 40 calculations questions with a 2-hour time allowance. Part 2 contains 120 selected-response questions with a 2.5-hour time allowance, including Single Best Answer (SBA) questions and Extended Matching Question (EMQ) sets.
That means the first resources to lock in are not flashy. They are the official General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) pages and documents that explain the assessment properly. Candidates who skip this step often end up revising against recycled summaries that are partly right and partly outdated.
The resources that usually earn their place
Most candidates do well with a narrow stack.
One reliable question source. One place for notes. Regular calculations practice. Official GPhC material for format and rules. Then, where needed, core professional references such as the British National Formulary (BNF) and resources relevant to law, ethics, and common clinical decision-making.
Too many paid resources often create a new problem. A candidate spends more time choosing between tools than using them properly.
| Resource type | What it is best for | When it becomes low value |
|---|---|---|
| Official GPhC pages and documents | Assessment structure, dates, rules, permitted items | When candidates treat summaries as a substitute for reading them |
| Question bank or revision platform | Practice, weak-area spotting, timed work | When questions are done without reviewing mistakes |
| Calculations workbook or repeated problem sets | Building accurate Part 1 method | When practice is too infrequent to build routine |
| Personal notes | Turning revision into something usable | When notes become endless rewriting instead of recall |
| BNF and core reference material | Applying real clinical information | When used passively rather than in case-style questions |
What is usually not worth much time
Large folders of other people's notes can look useful and still be unhelpful. The same is true of passive video watching when there is no follow-up practice. Some candidates also rely too heavily on advice from trainees who sat under older formats or who remember their own revision more neatly than it actually happened.
That does not mean those resources are useless. It means they should not lead the plan.
A realistic scenario
Imagine a trainee who has saved five revision websites, two shared drives of notes, several old PDFs, and a paid platform. Revision still feels disorganised. The problem is not motivation. It is overload.
The cleaner fix is to cut back. Keep the official GPhC pages for the structure. Keep one main question source. Keep one method for tracking weak areas. Keep a calculations routine. Then work from that for two weeks before adding anything else.
Most candidates improve faster after reducing the stack, not after increasing it.
What to prioritise if time is tight
If time is limited, spend it on practice that gives feedback. Questions, timed sections, calculations, and review of wrong answers usually beat passive reading. That is especially true close to the exam.
The strongest resource is often the one that makes the next study decision clearer. If a tool cannot show what to fix next, it may feel reassuring without actually helping.
How to tell a resource is worth keeping
Ask three questions.
Is it improving understanding? Is it helping you remember more under pressure? Is it making revision easier to organise rather than harder?
If the answer is no to all three, it should probably leave the plan.
Quick FAQs
- What is the most important resource for the CRA? Official GPhC information is the most important place to start for format, timing, rules, and assessment expectations.
- Do candidates need several question banks? Usually not. One good source used properly is often more effective than several used loosely.
- Are shared notes from other trainees enough? Not on their own. They can help, but most candidates still need active practice and their own organised review.
- What resource tends to be underused? Mistake tracking. Candidates often spend more on new resources than on making better use of the errors they already have.