The GSSE syllabus, made navigable

RACS names the GSSE topics but does not specify them. Anatomy and physiology have a syllabus document; pathology has none. GSSEPrep built a four-level syllabus covering all three disciplines and mapped all 16,324 questions in the bank to it.

What RACS publishes

Examination questions are drawn wholly from the subject matter set out in the syllabus.⁴ This is that syllabus, in full.

The problem

Anatomy gets a syllabus document. Physiology gets a syllabus document. Pathology, which carries roughly a quarter of the marks, gets nine words. That list above is not a summary of the pathology syllabus. It is the pathology syllabus.

The rest of it is not much better specified. Abdomen is one word standing in for 80 anatomy questions worth of examinable material. It names a region. It does not say which structures, which relationships, or to what depth. Two candidates can both cover the syllabus and study entirely different things.

Nor does the list tell you what carries marks. Read on its own, developmental and histology sit alongside abdomen and thorax as equals. The distribution showing they are worth two MCQs each against nine is published on a different page.³

Which leaves you with nothing to measure revision against. A nine-item list cannot tell you what you have not opened yet, or where you are weakest.

The Solution? The GSSE Prep Syllabus

We took the RACS disciplines and topics where they are defined, specified the levels beneath them where they are not, and gave every question in the bank an address inside it.

The physiology level matches the eight topics RACS publishes exactly.² Pathology maps onto the nine published topics. Anatomy follows the published regions, with head and neck separated and the back and spine specified.

Abdomen alone opens into solid viscera, hollow viscera, nerves, veins, ligaments and fascia, spaces and foramina, arteries, surface anatomy, muscles and lymphatics, each with its own question count.

Which means you finish a session knowing something more useful than a general sense that abdomen is probably fine. You can see the topics you have not opened, and the ones where your accuracy is worst, at the level of the individual topic rather than the discipline.

The syllabus tells you what is examinable. For what RACS says to read against it, see the official reading list.

The books RACS recommends →

References

1. Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. The GSSE syllabus. Available at: https://www.surgeons.org/Examinations/generic-surgical-sciences-examination-gsse/gsse-preparation/the-gsse-syllabus
2. Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Exam topics. Available at: https://www.surgeons.org/Examinations/generic-surgical-sciences-examination-gsse/gsse-preparation/exam-topics
3. Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Exam structure. Available at: https://www.surgeons.org/Examinations/generic-surgical-sciences-examination-gsse/gsse-preparation/exam-structure
4. Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. What does the GSSE test?. Available at: https://www.surgeons.org/en/Examinations/generic-surgical-sciences-examination-gsse/gsse-general-information/what-does-the-gsse-test
5. Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Core Surgical Anatomy syllabus (PDF). Available at: https://www.surgeons.org/-/media/Project/RACS/surgeons-org/files/exams/gsse/cur_2011-08-09_anatomy_syllabus_final_for_web.pdf
6. Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Physiology Syllabus (PDF). Available at: https://www.surgeons.org/-/media/Project/RACS/surgeons-org/files/exams/specialty-exams/Physiology-Syllabus.pdf

GSSEPrep is an independent educational platform and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.