MLA Content Map: what the UKMLA actually covers
The MLA content map is the official GMC framework behind the Medical Licensing Assessment. It sets out the core knowledge, skills, behaviours, patient presentations, conditions, and practical capabilities expected of doctors entering UK practice, and it underpins both the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) and the Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA).
For revision, the content map is best used as a coverage tool: it helps you see the full landscape of what may be assessed, spot weak areas, and build a revision plan that is broader and safer than revising by habit. It is a framework, not a shortcut, and it works best when paired with active question practice and clinical skills preparation.
Best use
Use the framework to plan safe breadth before pushing harder on questions.
Time-sensitive point
The October 2025 update applies from September 2026 sittings onward.
Still required
Question practice, explanation review, prescribing, and clinical skills work.
What the MLA content map is
The content map is the official reference point for MLA assessment content. The GMC describes it as the framework for the AKT and CPSA, and MLA assessment content is derived from it. It is designed around the knowledge, skills, and behaviours needed for safe UK practice at the point of entry to the medical register.
That matters because the map is not just a list of specialties. It is built to reflect the kinds of problems, decisions, and responsibilities doctors are expected to handle as they move into Foundation practice, with an emphasis on safe care, managing uncertainty, and person-centred decision making.
Which version applies to your exam
The GMC has an updated MLA content map. The updated version applies to MLA exams and assessments taken from September 2026 onwards. The original content map remains the reference for exams sat up to and including August 2026.
So the right first question is simple: which sitting are you preparing for? If your assessment falls from September 2026 onward, revise against the updated map.
How the content map is organised
The GMC describes the MLA content map as having three overarching themes and six domains.
- Readiness for safe practice
- Managing uncertainty
- Delivering person-centred care
The six domains are where the map becomes genuinely useful for revision.
1. Areas of clinical practice
This is the broad landscape of care delivery rather than a rigid specialty taxonomy. It includes areas such as acute and emergency care, cardiovascular medicine, child health, gastrointestinal medicine, mental health, musculoskeletal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, respiratory medicine, sexual health, surgery, and more.
2. Areas of professional knowledge
This covers the scientific, clinical, ethical, and social foundations of practice, including biomedical sciences, clinical biochemistry, clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, genetics and genomics, human factors and quality improvement, medical ethics and law, microbiology, psychological principles, and social and population health.
3. Clinical and professional capabilities
This domain focuses on what a newly qualified doctor must actually be able to do: gather and evaluate information, build differential diagnoses, request and interpret investigations, manage acute and chronic problems, communicate effectively, prescribe safely, manage risk, work in teams, and practise professionally.
4. Practical skills and procedures
This is the GMC-linked list of practical skills and procedures expected of newly qualified doctors, and it is especially relevant to clinical and skills-based assessment.
5. Patient presentations
This domain is built around how patients actually appear in practice: signs, symptoms, abnormal results, and other patient-related issues. The GMC also makes clear that candidates must be able to reason beyond the list itself, because real patients may describe problems in their own words, have multiple concurrent issues, or present without neat textbook patterns.
6. Conditions
This is the domain of diagnoses and pathophysiological disease. The list is not exhaustive, but it identifies core conditions that students should recognise, including both common conditions that underpin everyday practice and rarer but high-risk problems that require prompt recognition and escalation.
How the AKT papers are broadly split
For UK medical students, the AKT is a 200-item exam divided into two 100-question papers sat over two consecutive days. The Medical Schools Council publishes an MS AKT Sampling Grid which gives an indicative blueprint for how areas of clinical practice are sampled across the two papers.
This is useful for revision planning, but it should be read carefully. The grid gives the minimum number of items in each area of clinical practice within each paper cluster. It is not a promise that a paper will contain only those topics, and it is not a fixed specialty wall.
Paper 1
Paper 1 broadly samples from:
- Cardiovascular
- Respiratory
- Gastrointestinal
- Medicine of older adult
- Neurosciences
- Ophthalmology
- Endocrine
- Renal and urology
- Infection
- Dermatology
Paper 2
Paper 2 broadly samples from:
- Cancer
- Breast
- Haematology
- Palliative care
- Perioperative medicine and anaesthesia
- Musculoskeletal
- Emergency medicine
- Ear, nose and throat
- Child health
- Mental health
- Obstetrics and gynaecology
- Sexual health
- Social and population health and research methods
- Medical ethics and law
Areas covered across both papers
The sampling grid also indicates that the following are covered across the four clusters rather than sitting neatly inside one paper only:
- General practice
- Acute medicine
- Surgery
- Clinical imaging
Important caveat
Although each AKT item is blueprinted to a single area of clinical practice, the MSC notes that a question may still be relevant to more than one area. So this paper split is best used as a revision guide to exam structure, not as a narrow prediction tool.
What the map is good for
The content map is most useful when you treat it as a revision architecture rather than a document to admire from a distance.
- Checking breadth so revision does not collapse into familiar specialties only.
- Organising revision into systems, presentations, conditions, capabilities, and knowledge areas that can actually be tracked.
- Spotting where weak scores cluster so you can rebalance revision toward neglected parts of the MLA framework.
Used properly, it gives you a floor of safe coverage before you move into more intensive question-bank work.
Once you have mapped the presentations and specialties you need to cover, the next step is applying that knowledge through exam-style SBA practice. The StackMed UKMLA question bank is built around UKMLA-style clinical reasoning, with explanations designed to teach the underlying medicine rather than just reveal the answer.
What the map cannot do
- It is not a prediction tool for your exact paper, and it does not tell you what will appear in one sitting.
- It does not tell you how your own medical school will sequence teaching or how deeply each topic will be examined.
- It does not replace active question practice, explanation review, prescribing decisions, communication practice, or clinical skills preparation.
In other words, the map tells you what sits inside the assessment framework. It does not do the work of turning that framework into exam judgment for you.
A better way to think about this page
The strongest use of this page is not “here is a giant official list”. It is: here is the structure of the MLA, here is where the boundaries are, and here is how to turn that structure into a workable revision plan.
The content map tells you what the MLA covers. The AKT sampling grid helps you understand how that coverage is broadly distributed across the two papers. Together, they make the framework much more practical for revision.
For UK medical students, it is also worth remembering that your medical school curriculum remains the main foundation for preparation, and the Medical Schools Council provides free AKT support materials, including a student handbook and official practice papers.
How to use the MLA content map for revision
Start with the right version of the map for your sitting, then turn it into a working tracker. Build your revision around the six domains, but pay particular attention to how clinical practice areas, patient presentations, and conditions link together.
Orient yourself
Read the official map once so you understand the overall structure rather than jumping straight to isolated disease lists.
Track coverage
Keep a simple spreadsheet or checklist of domains, systems, and weak areas so you can see what you have actually revised rather than relying on a vague feeling of coverage.
Revise in mixed cycles
Pair content review with questions, error review, and retrieval. The goal is not passive familiarity with headings, but fast, safe reasoning from presentation to differential to investigation to management.
Audit and rebalance
Revisit your errors regularly. If misses cluster around certain presentations, conditions, or capability domains, shift time toward those areas instead of continuing to revise what already feels comfortable.
Use the official framework to plan your coverage, then practise the decisions.
Use the content map to set the boundaries of revision, then move into realistic UKMLA-style questions, explanation-led review, and clinical preparation so that the framework becomes exam-ready judgment.
Use the official framework to plan your coverage, then turn it into exam-ready decisions with realistic UKMLA-style practice.
Official sources
For the most accurate and up-to-date information, use the GMC, Medical Schools Council, and Foundation Programme materials as the source of truth.