How to prepare for ORE Part 1

Start with where you are

ORE Part 1 candidates arrive from very different places. Some qualified recently and have been studying since. Others have practised for many years in a different healthcare system and have not sat a written examination in a long time. The right preparation depends on which of these you are, and a short diagnostic across both papers is the quickest way to find out.

The free diagnostic asks 13 questions in about 15 minutes and gives a first read on every subject. Its questions follow UK guidance, so the answers you get wrong also start to show where your habits differ from it. For experienced practitioners that is often the larger gap.

Know what the examination asks

ORE Part 1 has two computer-based papers, each of 200 questions in three hours, about 54 seconds a question, taken on consecutive days in London. Questions are single best answer and extended matching. Both papers must be passed at the same sitting, and the pass mark is a normalised 50% on each.

The syllabus guide lists what each topic contains. The Paper A guide and Paper B guide describe the question style in each.

Learn UK guidance as rules

The single most useful thing an overseas candidate can do is to learn the UK sources the examination draws on, as short rules rather than as documents. The list is not long.

• Delivering Better Oral Health for fluoride and prevention.
• SDCEP guidance for anticoagulants, antimicrobial prescribing, MRONJ and caries in children.
• NICE guidance for third molar removal, suspected cancer referral and antibiotic prophylaxis.
• The FGDP selection criteria for dental radiography and IR(ME)R 2017 for radiation protection.
• The British Society of Periodontology implementation of the 2017 periodontal classification.
• Resuscitation Council UK guidance for medical emergencies.
• The International Association of Dental Traumatology guidelines for trauma.
• The GDC's Standards for the Dental Team and the Mental Capacity Act 2005 for consent, capacity and professional duties.

A knowledge organiser that states each rule with its source, and links it to questions that test it, shortens this work considerably.

Order the subjects by weakness and breadth

The provider does not publish how many questions each topic carries, so the order comes from your own results and the breadth of each topic. Begin with the subjects where you scored lowest, and cover the rest in turn, spending longest on the ones furthest from your daily practice. For many clinicians that means the Paper A sciences, which fade without use, and the Paper B topics that depend on UK rules, such as therapeutics, radiology, and law and ethics.

Do not start with the subject you enjoy most. It is usually the one you know best, and the marks are lost elsewhere.

Practise from the first week

Reading alone does not prepare anyone for ORE Part 1. From the first week, follow each block of reading with a set of questions in that subject and review every option, including the wrong ones. The ORE Part 1 practice questions page explains how the questions are built and how to review them.

A workable weekly pattern for a working candidate is:

1. Twenty to thirty minutes on weekdays: recall prompts on rules already learned, then ten to fifteen questions.
2. One longer weekend session for reading a new topic and a larger question set.
3. One short review at the end of the week of every rule that was answered wrongly.

Move to timed practice

Once every subject in both papers has been covered at least once, switch to mixed-subject sets at 54 seconds a question, and then to full papers. The free ORE Part 1 mock test runs 25 questions at that pace. A first full paper four to six weeks before the sitting leaves time to act on the result.

The final fortnight

Stop learning new material. Spend the time on the mistakes bank, on recall of numbers and classifications, and on one final timed paper for each of Paper A and Paper B. Read the joining instructions the provider issues for your sitting, and check that your photographic identification matches the details the GDC holds. Sleep matters more than one more chapter, and the papers fall on two consecutive days.

A plan that adapts

The ORE Part 1 study plan guide turns this method into week-by-week timetables for 12, 8 and 4 weeks, and the ORE Part 1 exam dates page counts the weeks to your sitting. ORE Ready's study plan builds the same structure from your sitting date, your hours and your diagnostic result, and recalculates the targets whenever a week is missed.