What this is — and what it isn't

How it works

Viva Station runs timed practice viva stations with an AI examiner: a spoken scenario, one question at a time, follow-up drilling that adapts to your answers, and a structured marksheet at the end. The examiner is built on a large language model — AI trained on the world's publicly available medical and scientific literature — with examination conduct designed by a consultant anaesthetist (FANZCA). Every question and scenario is generated fresh for your station.

Independence from ANZCA and all examining colleges

Viva Station is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to ANZCA or any examining college. It contains no college material of any kind: no past exam questions, no remembered questions, no examiner reports, no curriculum documents. Every question is an AI-generated original covering publicly known medical science. Topic areas follow the standard structure of the discipline — the same chapter headings you'd find in any textbook — nothing more.

How to use it well

Viva Station supplements in-person viva practice — it does not replace it. Practice with real consultants and colleagues remains the gold standard: they read your face, know the local flavour of examining, and give you the irreplaceable experience of performing under a real gaze.

What an AI examiner adds is volume and availability. A mock viva with a consultant takes organising; this takes ninety seconds, at 6am or midnight, with nobody watching you stumble. The pattern the founder used preparing for his own exams: one or two in-person practice vivas a day where possible, topped up with multiple AI stations — more repetitions, lower stakes, and a much smaller mental barrier than asking a colleague to grill you again. Use the dashboard to let the app steer you toward what you haven't covered; use humans to pressure-test what you think you know.

The AI can be wrong — treat it accordingly

Large language models are powerful but imperfect. They can state incorrect facts with complete confidence, mix up doses and values, and occasionally mark unfairly. Speech recognition can also mishear you. Treat every factual claim in a station or report the way you'd treat a colleague's recollection: useful, probably right, and to be verified against current references and local guidelines before it goes anywhere near a patient or an exam answer. If a station marks you down and you believe you were right — check a reference. Sometimes you were.