FRCR 2B examiners' reports, digested.

What the reports are, and one honest caveat

The RCR publishes examiners' reports for the Final FRCR Part B on its website, as text on the examiners' reports page. The published set covers sittings from 2016 to January 2023, each broken down by component: rapid reporting, reporting (the long cases), and the oral.

The caveat: the exam was reformed in June 2025, and the most recent listed report predates that. So the reports describe the previous format, and for how the current exam is structured and scored you should read our marking scheme guide instead. What has not changed is the candidate. The failures the examiners flag are behavioural - how people look, speak, decide and manage time under pressure - and they repeat across seven years of reports with remarkable consistency.

What examiners flag, sitting after sitting

Rapid reporting

• Findings named but not finished. The fracture is spotted but not characterised; the abnormality is called without the words that commit you. Half an observation earns half the credit.
• The second abnormality of a pair. Paired bones and ring structures break in twos; reports repeatedly note candidates stopping at the first find.
• Localisation and side. Imprecise position, or the wrong side entirely - and a wrong side scores zero for the case.
• Normal variants overcalled. Degenerative change and normal paediatric appearances marked as pathology; knowing normal is half of rapid reporting.

Long cases

• Time spent unevenly. A favourite case gets a consultant-grade essay, the unfamiliar one gets a rushed guess. Every case deserves an adequate answer; see our long cases guide for how the marks are spread.
• Verbose, unstructured answers. Long prose where a structured report was wanted, with the same facts repeated in different sections.
• Relevant negatives missing. The expected statement that there is no metastatic disease, or no second lesion, simply absent.
• Management that stops at "refer to MDT". Reports repeatedly ask for the specific next clinical step, not a handover to a meeting.

The oral

• Leaving the first image too early. Asking for the CT before the plain film has been fully read, a complaint the reports repeat sitting after sitting.
• Plain film interpretation. Chest and abdominal radiographs, repeatedly flagged as a weakness.
• Talking without pausing. A continuous stream that never commits and never lets the examiner steer.
• Answers the examiner cannot score. Mumbled, hedged or inaudible conclusions; an examiner cannot credit what was never clearly said.
• Skipping the simple modality. Reaching for CT or MRI where ultrasound is the correct next step, especially in paediatric and testicular cases.
• The UK pathway gap. Management answers that do not follow UK practice - the specific challenge for internationally trained candidates.

The pattern behind the patterns

Put the three lists side by side and they are one list. Marks are rarely lost on rare diagnoses. They are lost after the finding is named: the characterisation not finished, the second finding not sought, the management not specific, the answer not committed to out loud. The reports describe candidates who know radiology and still leave marks on the table - because the scored behaviours were never rehearsed as behaviours.

The reports read as the case for scoring every viva case on five domains rather than the diagnosis alone - which is what the current exam does. They are also the case for training the way the marking scheme pays.

How to use the reports in your own prep

1. Read three or four reports, once. An hour on the RCR page is enough to see the repetition for yourself. You are not memorising them; you are calibrating what examiners notice.
2. Turn each recurring theme into a drill. "Findings not characterised" becomes: say the full committed sentence for every case you practise. "Stopped at MDT" becomes: always name the next clinical step and its urgency.
3. Practise the spoken answer, not just the looking. Most of the oral-stage complaints - never pausing, never committing, inaudible conclusions - are speech habits, and they only change if your practice is out loud.
4. Close the pathway gap deliberately. If you trained outside the UK, learn the named UK guideline behind each management answer rather than inferring it from your local practice.