ANZCA Primary viva practice
The Primary tests applied physiology, pharmacology, anatomy and measurement. The viva rewards a candidate who can build an answer out loud under time, not just recall facts. Below is every area you can drill on Viva Station, grouped the way the syllabus is. Each links to a page on how that topic tends to be examined — then you can sit a timed spoken station on it.
First, how the ANZCA Primary viva works.
Practise this out loud with an AI examiner. Your first 2 stations are free.
Physiology
Respiratory physiology
A common opener. Examiners usually start wide — ventilation, gas exchange, the control of breathing — then push toward the mechanism behind whatever you led with. It helps to have a curve or a diagram you can talk through rather than a list to recite.
Cardiovascular physiology
Heavily examined. Expect a broad opening that narrows fast into control mechanisms — the baroreflex, the determinants of cardiac output, how preload and contractility fit together. A few governing relationships you can reason from are worth more than trying to recall everything.
Neurophysiology
Easier to handle if you separate the levels — cellular, pathway, whole-system — and say which one you're answering at. Autonomic control, cerebral blood flow and pain pathways come up often. A framework matters more than breadth.
Renal physiology
Examiners often start at the nephron and ask you to follow a substance along it, or to explain how the kidney copes with a challenge. Working through a mechanism in order, out loud, is what separates understanding from memory.
Fluids and electrolytes
Often examined through a disturbance — a sodium or potassium problem — and how the body defends against it. The examiner is usually checking whether your reasoning is ordered and safe, not whether you can list every cause.
Acid-base physiology
A topic where a reliable method beats knowledge. If you have a fixed sequence for working through a disturbance and can talk it through calmly, this is one of the more predictable passes.
Gastrointestinal and hepatic physiology
Usually comes up once the bigger systems have been covered. Liver function and its relevance to anaesthesia is common. It helps to link the physiology to why it matters in theatre rather than reciting it.
Thermoregulation
A small topic examiners use to see whether you can reason from control — the set point, the sensing, the responses — instead of listing the ways the body loses heat.
Haematology
Coagulation and oxygen carriage recur. The examiner is often checking whether you can hold a sequence — the clotting cascade, the oxygen dissociation curve and what shifts it — and reason about it while being prompted.
Cellular physiology
Membrane potentials, transport, signalling. One clean mechanism you can draw and talk through tends to go better than trying to cover the whole cell.
Metabolic and endocrine physiology
Control loops are the theme — how an axis is regulated and what happens when it fails. Ordered reasoning about feedback beats a gland-by-gland tour.
Maternal and foetal physiology
Examined through the changes of pregnancy and what they mean for the anaesthetist. Grouping the changes by system and linking each to its anaesthetic consequence keeps things organised.
Pharmacology
General pharmacology and pharmacokinetics
The groundwork the rest of pharmacology is built on. Compartment models, clearance and the concentration–effect relationship come up often. Defining terms cleanly and reasoning from first principles is what earns the marks.
Inhalational anaesthetic agents
Expect uptake and distribution, MAC and what changes it, and organ effects. Examiners want you to reason about why an agent behaves the way it does, not recite a table.
Intravenous anaesthetic agents
Pharmacokinetics and dynamics of the induction agents, and why context-sensitive behaviour matters at the bedside. A structured compare-and-contrast under prompting works well.
Opioids
Receptor pharmacology, the effects the agents share, and what sets them apart. Examiners tend to probe the edges — tolerance, side effects — so setting out your structure early helps you keep control.
Neuromuscular blocking agents and reversal
Dependable and high-yield. The junction, depolarising versus non-depolarising block, monitoring and reversal make a natural sequence to work through in order.
Local anaesthetics
Mechanism, what governs onset and duration, and toxicity. Systemic toxicity and how you'd manage it is a safety point examiners keep coming back to.
Cardiovascular pharmacology
Examined by class against the physiology — how an agent acts on cardiac output or vascular tone. Tying the drug back to the physiology you've already covered keeps the answer coherent.
Miscellaneous pharmacology
A catch-all — antiemetics, anticoagulants, the agents that don't sit neatly in a class. Examiners use it to test breadth, so a method for approaching any unfamiliar drug is your safety net.
Pain
Measurement, equipment & other
Clinical measurement
The principles of measurement, where error comes from, and how a variable is actually measured. Examiners want you to reason about a method's limits, not just name it.
Anaesthetic equipment
How a device works, how it fails, and the safety features that guard against that. Being able to reason through what happens when a part fails is what shows understanding.
Anatomy
Applied and procedure-focused — the airway, the neuraxis, regional blocks. Examiners want anatomy you can act on, described in the order you'd use it.
Statistics and research methods
Study design, reading data, and the basis of evidence. A steady way of interpreting a result — what it shows and what it doesn't — turns this into marks.
Integrated clinical scenario
Deliberately cross-cutting. The examiner is checking whether you can pull physiology, pharmacology and measurement together into one answer under pressure.
Sit a ANZCA Primary station.
Your first 2 stations are free. Email sign-in, no password, no card — just you and the examiner.
Start practising