DentPass vs Quesmed: Can a Medical Question Bank Cover the BDS Curriculum?
Quesmed is a strong platform built for medical students. We went through the Year 1 BDS syllabus system by system to work out how much of it a medical bank can actually reach.
By DentPass · · 6 min read
Quesmed is good. That is worth saying first, because the rest of this article is about why a good product can still be the wrong purchase.
It is built for UK medical students and doctors, covering UKMLA, MRCP, MSRA and UCAT, with a question bank, mark schemes and video teaching. Medical students rate it, and they are right to.
Dental students keep asking about it for an obvious reason. Your first two years share a lot of science with medicine, there is no shortage of medical question banks, and for a while there was very little written for you. So the question is a fair one: how much of a BDS syllabus can a medical bank actually cover?
Roughly the biomedical half of Year 1, and almost none of anything with the word oral or dental in front of it. If your course runs joint biomedical papers with medicine, or you are intercalating, a medical bank earns its subscription. If you are being examined on dental materials, oral biology or dental anatomy, it cannot help you.
The overlap, system by system
These are the systems a UK BDS Year 1 is typically assessed on. For each one, how much can a medical question bank reach?
| Year 1 area | Covered by a medical bank? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Physiology | Largely yes | Cardiovascular, respiratory, renal and endocrine physiology is the same physiology. |
| Biochemistry | Largely yes | Metabolism does not change discipline, though the depth expected differs. |
| Pharmacology | Partly | Mechanisms transfer. Local anaesthetics, the drugs that matter to a dentist and the interactions you will be asked about do not get the same weight. |
| Cellular and molecular medicine | Largely yes | Cell biology, genetics and molecular mechanisms overlap closely. |
| Microbiology and immunology | Partly | General immunology transfers. Oral microbiology, biofilms and the plaque ecology your papers examine do not appear. |
| Head and neck anatomy | Barely | Medical anatomy touches the head and neck; it does not examine it at the level a dental school does. |
| Oral biology | No | Enamel, dentine, pulp, periodontal tissues, tooth development. Not a medical topic. |
| Dental biomaterials | No | Composites, amalgam, impression materials, setting reactions. Not a medical topic. |
| Evidence based practice | Largely yes | Study design and statistics are the same, though examples are clinical medicine. |
| Preparing for patients | No | Dental professionalism, GDC standards and the dental patient journey are specific to your registration. |
Count that up and a medical bank plausibly serves about half of Year 1, weighted towards the parts most students find easiest to self teach from a textbook, and none of the parts that are distinctively dental.
The subtler problem: the clinical frame
Coverage is the obvious issue. The framing is the one that catches people out.
A medical bank teaches pharmacology through medical scenarios: managing hypertension, treating heart failure, prescribing for sepsis. That is not wasted knowledge, but it is not what you will be asked. A dental paper asks about the maximum safe dose of lidocaine with adrenaline in a 70 kg adult, about which antihypertensive gives you gingival overgrowth, about the patient on a bisphosphonate who needs an extraction, about warfarin and INR before minor oral surgery.
Same underlying pharmacology. Completely different question. Practising one does not train you for the other, and the closer the two look the easier it is to believe you are prepared when you are not.
Side by side
| DentPass | Quesmed | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | UK BDS students, Years 1 to 5 | UK medical students and doctors |
| Target exams | UK dental school assessments | UKMLA, MRCP, MSRA, UCAT |
| Oral biology, dental materials, dental anatomy | Yes | No |
| Clinical framing | Dental scenarios and dental patients | Medical scenarios and medical patients |
| Question formats | Single best answer, short answer, image spotters, timed mocks | Question bank plus mark schemes and videos |
| Curriculum reference | GDC core BDS curriculum | UK medical curricula |
| Free access | Free plan, no card | Subscription, see their site |
When Quesmed is the right purchase
- You are intercalating in a biomedical or medical science year. The medical syllabus is now your syllabus.
- Your school runs joint papers with the medical school for basic sciences, which some do for parts of Years 1 and 2.
- You want depth in general medicine because you are heading for oral and maxillofacial surgery and plan to do medicine later.
- You have already exhausted your dental resources for a shared topic and want more physiology repetitions than anyone has written for dentistry.
When it is the wrong purchase
- Your next exam includes oral biology, dental materials or dental anatomy, which for most BDS students is every exam.
- You are buying it because a medic in your flat recommended it, without checking whether your syllabus matches theirs.
- You are paying for a large bank and will realistically use the two or three modules that overlap.
What DentPass does instead
DentPass is built around one curriculum and does not pretend to serve another. More than 16,000 live questions across 127 topics, written against the GDC core BDS syllabus, in the two formats UK dental schools examine you in: single best answer and short answer. Every question carries an explanation, mocks can be timed and built by year and topic, and per topic analytics show you where the marks are actually leaking.
Year 1 is complete and Year 2 is being filled in now. If you are in the clinical years we are not there yet, and we would rather you knew that from us.
Questions we get asked
Does Quesmed have a dental question bank?
Quesmed is built for medical exams: UKMLA, MRCP, MSRA and UCAT. Dental students use it for the biomedical science that dentistry shares with medicine, but the oral and dental content examined in a BDS degree is outside what it is designed to cover. Check their site for their current product range before subscribing.
How much of the BDS curriculum does a medical question bank cover?
Roughly the shared biomedical science of the first two years: physiology, biochemistry, cell biology, general immunology and research methods. It does not cover oral biology, dental biomaterials, head and neck anatomy at dental depth, dental pharmacology or dental professionalism, which is where most of the distinctively dental marks are.
Should a dental student pay for both?
Only if you have a specific reason, such as intercalating or a joint paper with the medical school. Otherwise you are paying twice for the overlapping half and once for content you will never be examined on.
Is DentPass just a dental version of Quesmed?
No. The formats are different, because dental papers are: alongside single best answer questions we write short answer questions, which most medical banks do not, and image spotter papers. The content is written against dental school teaching rather than adapted from medical material.
Revise the syllabus you are actually sitting
Over 16,000 questions built around the UK BDS curriculum, including the oral biology, dental materials and head and neck anatomy a medical bank cannot reach. Free plan, no card needed.
See also: our full ranking of dental revision platforms, DentPass vs Passmedicine and DentPass vs Pastest.