← All boards

Certification Examination in General Surgery (Canada)

North America · CA · Premium pricing

Examination structure

Covered by the bank; blueprint not transcribed yet

The bank prepares you for this examination — it is general surgery, and there is one bank for all of them. What we have not done yet is obtain this body’s published syllabus and transcribe it domain by domain, which is what lets us show you a coverage table instead of asking you to take our word for it. Where we have done that, the table is on the page; here it is not, and we would rather say so than let you assume otherwise.

Sat this exam? Tell us how it was structured — it is the fastest way to get its blueprint mapped.

Syllabus weighting used

Until this board's own blueprint is transcribed, questions are drawn against the general exit-examination distribution.

Surgical Oncology15%
Applied Surgical Basic Science10%
Surgical Critical Care9%
Trauma and Damage Control8%
Emergency General Surgery8%
Abdominal Wall and Hernia6%
Benign Hepatopancreatobiliary Disease6%
Benign Colorectal Disease5%
Perioperative Care, ERAS and Patient Safety5%
Benign Oesophagogastric Disease4%
Proctology and Pelvic Floor3%
Endocrine Surgery3%
Breast Disease3%
Vascular Surgery for the General Surgeon3%
Paediatric Surgery for the General Surgeon3%
Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery2%
Skin, Soft Tissue and Necrotising Infection2%
Thoracic Surgery for the General Surgeon2%
Evidence, Statistics and Critical Appraisal2%
Transplantation and Organ Donation1%

Common questions about this examination

What are the parts of the FRCSC examination?

Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada examines with a written multiple-choice paper and an oral viva. We do not publish question counts or durations for this examination because we have not obtained its official document; where we have, the numbers are on the page.

Is there a question bank for the FRCSC?

This one. 5,000 single-best-answer questions across the whole of general surgery, each with the reasoning for every option rather than only the correct one, written by a consultant surgical oncologist. It is written to the discipline, not transcribed from the FRCSC blueprint — general surgery is general surgery wherever it is examined, and we say plainly which boards we have mapped and which we have not.

How hard are the questions?

2,051 of the 5,000 — 41% — sit at the hardest of three levels: trial results, guideline nuance and the cases that split examiners. Fifty questions are free with an account, so you can judge the level before paying.

How do I practise the FRCSC oral component?

With the oral simulator, included in a subscription. Six stations as an examination sets them; you choose the station and the examiner chooses the case from more than a hundred scenarios built on this bank. It presses when an answer is vague and marks by domain — reasoning, guidelines, decision-making and communication.

What does preparation for the FRCSC cost?

It is priced by the country your card is issued in, so candidates are not quoted another country's price. The exact figures for this board are on this page. Fifty questions and the 476-page revision book are free.

Every answer above is taken from the examining body's own published document, not from our reading of it.

Price for this board

For candidates paying from Hong Kong, Singapore and the Gulf states.

Quarterly

$99

Annual

$299

Start with 50 free questions