AMC adult medicine MCQ questions

What the AMC tests in adult medicine

The AMC's examination specifications describe adult health (medicine) as a broad spectrum of adult health and aged care. It expects a foundation in physiology, biochemistry, anatomy and pharmacology, an understanding of pathophysiology and familiarity with current management: investigations, procedures, and drug and non-drug treatment. Each question is also classified by clinician task: data gathering, data interpretation and synthesis, or management.

Most questions reflect common conditions in the Australian community. Others are included because they are critical to the patient: life-threatening illness, safe practice, a successful clinical outcome or an important public health issue. The questions on this page cover cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, renal and acid-base, infectious disease, neurology, gastroenterology, haematology, rheumatology, dermatology, toxicology and palliative care, and the acutely unwell older patient.

Where it sits in the exam

Adult medicine is 30% of the blueprint, about 45 of the 150 questions, and the largest single group. The AMC randomises questions across the blueprint, so a medicine question may follow a paediatric or an ethics question. Medicine also shares ground with the other groups: an NSAID user with epigastric pain may be a surgical question, serotonin toxicity or alcohol withdrawal a mental health one and cardiovascular risk assessment a population health one.

Where candidates go wrong

These traps recur in our question bank, and most come from reaching for a familiar step in the wrong order.

• Anchoring on the troponin. A raised troponin with chest pain is read as myocardial infarction, when a blood pressure difference between the arms points to aortic dissection.
• The first test in the wrong place. A D-dimer is ordered when a deep vein thrombosis is already likely on the Wells score, where imaging comes first. A negative tTG-IgA is taken as excluding coeliac disease without checking for IgA deficiency.
• The slower treatment first. In hyperkalaemia with ECG changes, insulin and glucose are given before calcium, which leaves the heart unprotected while the potassium falls. In anaphylaxis, an antihistamine or a fluid bolus comes before intramuscular adrenaline. In adrenal crisis, fluids are started and hydrocortisone waits for a cortisol result.
• Oxygen by the saturation alone. Oxygen is left running because the saturation looks good, while over-oxygenation raises the carbon dioxide of a patient who retains it.
• Australian first aid and toxicology. A snakebite is washed rather than bandaged and immobilised, and a paracetamol level is taken before the 4-hour point the nomogram is built on.

How to revise adult medicine

Revise by presentation, the way questions arrive: chest pain, breathlessness, confusion, fever, a raised creatinine. For each, learn the first investigation, the finding that changes management and the Australian first-line treatment. The AMC advises care with major reference textbooks, because its questions lean towards common presentations, differential diagnosis and therapeutics, and it names Australian Prescriber and general practice journals as useful sources.

Some numbers decide the answer on their own. These are the Australian thresholds for blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular risk, which differ in places from guidelines used elsewhere.

Use Therapeutic Guidelines for drug choice and antibiotics, the 2025 Heart Foundation and CSANZ guideline for acute coronary syndromes, which replaced the 2016 guideline, and the Australian Asthma Handbook. The AMC's free book Australian Medicine in Context covers 105 common conditions in their Australian setting. Adult medicine pairs naturally with surgery, and the study plan guide weights both by their share of the exam.