North of England FRCS Section 2 Viva Course — January 2026

The January 2026 course followed our established two-day format. Day 1 was dominated by full-circuit viva practice, with each candidate rotating through individual exam-replica stations examined one-to-one or two-to-one by faculty pairs. Day 2 opened with subspecialty breakout sessions — Upper GI, Colorectal, Critical Care and General Surgery & Principles of Surgery — running in parallel, before reconvening for a final integrated viva circuit and individual candidate debriefs.

Feedback after each station was a deliberate centrepiece of the format. Faculty were asked not simply to indicate whether an answer was right or wrong, but to demonstrate the specific structural changes — opening sentence, prioritisation framework, use of guidelines, escalation triggers — that move a candidate from a borderline answer to a clear pass-grade answer.

Gallery

What candidates said

What this course included

Like every North of England FRCS course, this cohort followed our established two-day, exam-replica format:

• A full circuit of exam-replica viva stations across the General Surgery curriculum
• A one-to-one / two-to-one examiner ratio under exam conditions
• Structured, candidate-specific feedback after every station
• Subspecialty breakouts and clinical case practice
• A calibrated faculty of consultant and recently-successful surgeons