Preparing for the PRES 2 Exam: I Wish I Had Found PLABABLE Sooner

I sit the PRES 2 exam next week.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, PRES is the Pre-Registration Examination System run by the Medical Council of Ireland, the regulator responsible for deciding whether international medical graduates can register and practise medicine in Ireland.

If you have just started preparing for the PRES exam, this post is for you.

I spent far too long trying to figure out how to approach this exam properly. The resources are scattered, the advice is inconsistent, and unlike exams such as PLAB or USMLE, there is very little structured guidance online about PRES preparation. I made most of the mistakes you can make early on, and if this article saves someone else a few weeks of confusion, it will have done its job.

I also want to be transparent from the beginning. This is not a sponsored post. I am a paying PLABABLE user and have no affiliation or arrangement with them. I am writing this because I struggled to find honest information about PRES preparation when I started, and I wanted to leave something useful behind for the next person searching for it.

The thing I wish I had realised immediately

When you begin preparing for the PRES exam, one of the first things you notice is how little PRES-specific material actually exists.

There are sample questions from the Medical Council of Ireland, a few online discussions, occasional courses, scattered PDFs, and bits of advice passed between candidates. There are also a small number of PRES-marketed products, but none with the scale or maturity of the major PLAB platforms.

I wasted weeks trying to find a proper question bank.

What I should have done immediately was this. Download the official IMC PRES Level 2 sample paper. Then download the GMC PLAB 1 sample paper and compare them side by side.

The overlap between the two publicly available sample papers is substantial. The structure, the style of questioning, and many of the clinical scenarios are very closely aligned. For example, question one on both papers is a fifty-five year old man with diarrhoea, weight loss, and an itchy rash on his buttocks and thighs, asking for the small bowel biopsy finding. Same options, same correct answer: villous atrophy. Question two on both is a malnourished, restless twenty-six year old woman in the Emergency Department. Same options, same answer: heroin. Question three on both is a seventy-four year old man with painless jaundice. Same options, same answer: CT scan of abdomen. The pattern continues throughout.

This observation relates only to the official sample papers published by both regulators, not to the confidential live examinations themselves. But the sample paper is, by definition, what each regulator puts out as the worked example of what their exam looks like. If the IMC's worked example tracks the GMC's worked example closely, the practical implication for your revision is clear.

PLAB resources can be used very effectively for PRES preparation.

That changed the direction of my revision completely.

Using PLABABLE for PRES preparation

Once I realised this, I subscribed to PLABABLE, and it has been the main resource I have used during the last three months of preparation.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, PLABABLE is a PLAB 1 revision platform built around a large single best answer question bank, timed mock exams, revision materials, study groups, and additional mock papers called Big Mocks. They also offer an optional add-on called Gems, which contains condensed revision summaries and flashcard-style review material.

Formally, it is a PLAB resource, not a PRES resource. But in practical terms, given the overlap between the official sample papers, it translated very naturally into PRES preparation.

More than anything else, what it gave me was structure.

Before using it, my revision felt chaotic. I had screenshots of guidelines, downloaded PDFs, scattered notes, half-finished reading, and the constant feeling of being busy without being able to tell whether I was actually improving.

Once I started using a question bank consistently, my preparation became much simpler. I would choose a category, answer questions, review the explanations carefully, flag weak areas, and revisit them later. Repeat daily. That loop improved my preparation far more than passive reading ever did.

The timed mocks were also important. Sitting three hours of single best answer questions requires concentration and pacing that need to be trained properly. Reading about exam technique is not the same as experiencing fatigue halfway through a long paper and learning how to manage it.

I deliberately saved the Big Mock exams for later in my preparation because they contain new questions separate from the main bank, which made them feel more like a genuine readiness check rather than revision of familiar material.

The Gems were useful in a different way. I mostly used them during shorter study periods when I was too tired to sit down and do large blocks of questions but still wanted to revise something actively.

Looking back now, I genuinely think my preparation would have been calmer and more organised if I had started using PLABABLE from the beginning instead of spending weeks trying to reinvent a revision strategy myself.

The mistakes I made early on

One of my biggest mistakes was starting with passive reading.

I spent too much time early on reading textbooks chapter by chapter, highlighting sections, taking notes, and convincing myself that I was being productive. In reality, I was avoiding the discomfort of discovering what I did not know.

Question practice exposed weaknesses much faster.

Textbooks still have value, especially when revisiting weaker topics, but for this type of exam I do not think they should be the starting point of revision.

I also underestimated the importance of the small amount of Irish-specific content that does exist around the exam. While much of the core structure overlaps well with PLAB-style preparation, there are still local guidelines, prescribing practices, and healthcare-system details worth reviewing separately. The Medical Council blueprint is useful for this because it outlines the domains and scope of the exam clearly.

The other mistake I made was spending too much time on forums looking for certainty.

You will always find stories from people who prepared for two weeks and passed, or studied for six months and failed. Eventually I realised those stories were not helpful. The candidates who seem most comfortable with the exam are usually the ones who started question practice early and stuck with it.

The advice I would give now

If I were starting PRES preparation again today, this is exactly what I would do.

First, I would compare the official IMC and PLAB sample papers myself rather than relying on hearsay from forums.

Then I would start structured question practice immediately instead of waiting until later in revision.

Personally, I would use PLABABLE from the first week because it provides the structure and consistency that I struggled to find elsewhere during PRES preparation.

I would still read around Irish-specific topics separately and use the Medical Council blueprint as a guide, but I would spend far less time collecting resources and far more time actively answering questions under timed conditions.

At this point, one week before the exam, that is the single biggest lesson I have taken from the process.

I will write a follow-up after sitting the exam and compare how the live paper felt relative to the official sample material.

Until then, I am going back to the question bank...