This article is adapted from a post in Dr Koshy Jacob's "Building Revise Radiology in Public" series on LinkedIn.

Let me start with an honest admission, because I suspect a lot of radiologists will recognise it. My own physics knowledge, when I sat the FRCR, was poor. Back then physics sat within the Part 2A exam, so I focused my effort on the subjects I understood better, hoped physics would account for only a small number of questions, and did my best to get through. That's more or less what happened. I concentrated where I could score, tried to wing enough of the physics, and, fortunately or perhaps unfortunately, I passed. (Physics is now examined in the First FRCR, Part 1, alongside anatomy, but the challenge candidates describe is exactly the same.)

If that sounds familiar, this post is for you, because there's a problem with that approach that's worth naming.

Passing is not the same as understanding

Getting through an exam and genuinely understanding a subject are not the same thing. I report MRI scans every day now. I recognise artefacts, I know when something doesn't look right, and I've developed a practical feel for what's going on. But that came mainly from reporting thousands of scans, not from a strong underlying grasp of the physics. The understanding arrived years late, and by a harder route than it needed to.

Physics was never the subject most of us loved revising. But the gap between scraping a pass and actually understanding the material doesn't disappear when you walk out of the exam. It follows you into the reporting room.

Why physics has to be taught differently

Here's what makes physics different from much of radiology training: the concepts aren't naturally reinforced by everyday practice. If you're learning MRI physics, ultrasound principles, nuclear medicine physics, or radiation protection, you may be meeting some of these ideas for the very first time, with nothing in your daily work to anchor them.

That's why cramming works so poorly for physics specifically, and why slide-after-slide delivery leaves so little behind. The subject needs to be built up properly, from the basics, in a way that makes the ideas stick rather than survive just long enough for exam day.

What a good physics course actually needs

We think a good physics course has to be comprehensive rather than rushed. Ours runs over four days, deliberately, because we don't want to gallop through the material or assume everyone already understands the fundamentals. It's concentrated, but for a subject like this that's a strength: the teaching is built around questions, explanations, and discussion rather than simply presenting slides.

The aim is understanding you can rely on, whether you're sitting FRCR Part 1 physics or preparing for a physics exam elsewhere in the world.

The person leading it

This is also why I have such respect for Dr Ebinesh Arulnathan. He's an excellent clinician and teacher, but what stands out is that he genuinely loves physics and understands it deeply, which is rarer than it should be. He has already been running physics lectures for us and helping shape the course, and he's now joining Revise Radiology as our Physics Programme Director.

With his leadership, the team we're building around him, and a collaboration we hope to announce shortly, our goal is a world-class physics course for FRCR candidates and radiologists preparing for physics exams anywhere.

The point

If we can help future candidates understand physics properly, rather than getting through it the rather questionable way I did, that would be a good outcome. You shouldn't have to wait until you've reported thousands of scans to finally understand what's happening on them.

And, as with everything we do, the course is run as a not-for-profit venture, so the only incentive is to teach the subject well.

If physics is the part of the FRCR you're dreading, explore our physics course, built to make the concepts genuinely make sense.

Want to see who's teaching it? Meet the faculty leading the programme.

Originally shared by Dr Koshy Jacob on LinkedIn. Follow the series there