GreyBrain Pulse · Published 11 Oct 2026
Ten viva questions, and the trap each one sets
The teacher · What’s advancing · F2
Ten questions with the confident wrong answer named for each — the part that takes years of examining to learn.
Why this matters for your role
The student’s skill: ask for an explanation, work through it, then verify it against the taught source.
Your worked example
Teaching source: Random allocation reduces systematic baseline differences between groups. Blinding can reduce some measurement and performance biases. Neither guarantees that a result applies to every population.
Put it into practice
Create a short teaching analogy, a synthetic viva question and a worked answer grounded only in the source. Include a misconception check and a question the learner must answer independently.
Clinician prompt
Ten viva questions, and the trap each one sets
Ten questions with the confident wrong answer named for each — the part that takes years of examining to learn.
Build me a viva ladder. This is a teaching exercise. Topic: [YOUR TOPIC] Level: [MBBS / postgraduate / fellowship] Produce ten questions arranged as a ladder from recall to reasoning. For each question give: - The question, in the words you would actually use in the room. - The answer you expect at this level, in two lines. - The trap: the confident wrong answer a good student gives here, and what it reveals about the misconception underneath. - The follow-up question that separates a student who understands from one who has memorised. Then mark the point in the ladder where most candidates at this level stop being able to continue, and tell me what to teach differently before the next batch. End with a short section titled "Your check" listing what I must verify myself before using any of this.
Synthetic practice example. Run it as-is and check the output against the supplied facts.
Your check
You are the subject expert. Verify every expected answer against your standard text before you use these, and discard any where the "trap" is not one you have actually seen.
Teaching material, not an assessment instrument. Institutional assessment must go through your own approval process.
Sources inform this fieldnote; their publishers do not endorse GreyBrain. This exercise does not confer clinical competence or a certificate.