January 2026 — Gallery
January 2026
North of England FRCS Section 2 Viva Course — January 2026
- Dates17 Jan 2026 – 18 Jan 2026
- VenueDePuy International (Johnson & Johnson MedTech), Leeds
- StatusCompleted
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.
25Candidates examined
25Faculty contributions
4.9/5Mean overall rating
100%Would recommend
4.64overall100%would recommend
“Excellent simulation of the pressure and time constraints expected in the exam — and everyone was lovely.”
Gallery
What candidates said
★★★★★
The closest approximation to the actual examination I had encountered. The station-by-station structured feedback let me identify and fix weaknesses immediately rather than retrospectively.
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