AFK Released Questions: Where to Get Them + How to Use Them

The most undervalued AFK resource is free

Ask ten candidates which study material they wish they had used sooner, and a striking share will name the same one: the NDEB Released Test Item Bank. It is roughly 1,500-plus retired AFK questions, published by the Commission on Dental Accreditation of Canada, and available as a free PDF on the NDEB site. It is the only collection of items that has ever appeared on a real Assessment of Fundamental Knowledge — every other question in your study life is somebody's reasonable guess at the format. The released bank is not a guess. It is the format. And most candidates underuse it because nobody tells them how.

What the NDEB Released Item Bank Is

The Released Test Item Bank is a curated set of multiple-choice questions that the National Dental Examining Board of Canada has retired from active rotation and published for candidate use. The bank has been updated and reissued periodically since the early 2000s, with the most recent compilations consolidating items across several testing cycles into a single PDF.

What is in it:

• Single best-answer MCQs covering the AFK blueprint domains — applied sciences, oral diagnosis, oral medicine and pathology, oral and maxillofacial radiology, periodontics, endodontics, prosthodontics, operative dentistry, paediatric dentistry, orthodontics, oral surgery, pharmacology, behavioural sciences, and infection control.
• Stem formats that mirror the live AFK — short clinical vignette, occasional radiograph or photograph reference, four or five answer options.
• Distractors that reflect how the NDEB's item-writers actually try to mislead candidates.

What is not in it:

• Answer rationales. The PDF gives keys but no explanations, which is exactly why the bank punishes lazy review.
• Recently retired items from the past one or two cycles, which the NDEB tends to hold back.
• Any item from the Applied Knowledge Examination or the OSCE — released questions are AFK only.

Where to Download It

The bank is hosted on the NDEB's public site at ndeb-bned.ca. The file is free, no login required, and the link has been stable for several years even as the document itself has been refreshed. If the URL has shifted by the time you read this, search "NDEB AFK released items PDF" on the official ndeb-bned.ca domain — the bank is reachable from the AFK candidate resources page under preparation materials. Always pull from the NDEB itself rather than third-party mirrors; mirrored copies tend to be older revisions with outdated answer keys.

While you are on the site, save a copy of the AFK Protocol 2026 alongside the released bank. The protocol tells you the blueprint weighting; the released items tell you what those weightings feel like in practice.

Want to check whether your current study mix is calibrated to the released bank? Start with a free diagnostic on Lumen — it sorts your weakest blueprint domains in under twenty minutes.

Why Released Questions Are More Valuable Than Generic MCQs

Most third-party question banks are written by clinicians who have either never sat the AFK or sat it years ago. The questions are clinically reasonable but stylistically off — too long, too short, too American, too textbook. Released questions are different on three axes:

1. Stem length. AFK stems are tighter than US dental boards. The released bank trains your eye to find the diagnostic clue inside two or three sentences, rather than wading through a USMLE-length vignette.
2. Distractor logic. NDEB writers favour distractors that are either close cousins of the right answer or textbook-correct in a different scenario. Generic banks tend to use clearly-wrong distractors that flatter your reasoning. Released items punish the half-prepared.
3. Difficulty calibration. The released bank skews slightly easier than the live exam — these are retired items, after all — but the relative difficulty across topics tracks the live test closely. If you find paediatrics released items harder than perio, the live exam will likely feel the same way.

That last point matters most. The released bank is your reference for what a representative AFK question looks like. Every other resource — including ours — should be judged against it.

How to Work Through 1,500-plus Items in 8 Weeks

Below is the workflow most successful Lumen users converge on. It assumes roughly two hours per day, six days a week, and treats the released bank as the spine of preparation rather than a final-week skim.

1. Week 1 — Triage and baseline. Skim the entire PDF. Mark every question as either "I know this cold," "I half know this," or "I have no idea." Do not score yourself yet; the goal is a heatmap.
2. Week 2 — Half-known first. Work the half-known pile in 40-question blocks. After each block, write a one-line note for every miss: the concept, not the trivia. These notes are your study spine.
3. Week 3 — Unknown territory. Move into the no-idea pile. Expect this week to feel brutal. Use a textbook or our AFK study guide to fill the conceptual gap, not just the answer.
4. Week 4 — First full mock. Take 200 released items in a single timed sitting (the official AFK length, four hours of testing). Score, and bucket your misses by blueprint domain. This is your first honest pass-probability estimate.
5. Week 5 — Targeted topic blocks. Spend the week on your two weakest domains, alternating released items with a modern bank for breadth.
6. Week 6 — Spaced re-test. Re-attempt every released item you have ever missed. The ones you miss twice are your true weak spots; the ones you now hit are stable.
7. Week 7 — Second full mock. 200 items again, fresh mix, four hours under exam conditions. Compare blueprint-domain scores against week 4. Anything that has not moved needs an intervention, not more reps.
8. Week 8 — Polish and rest. Light review, no new content, two short timed blocks per day. Sleep more than you study in the final 72 hours.

The point of the eight weeks is not to memorise 1,500 answers. It is to internalise the NDEB's question style so deeply that the live exam feels familiar.

The Limitation: They Are Old, and Some Are Retired for a Reason

A blunt caveat. The released bank is a snapshot of items the NDEB no longer uses. There are three reasons an item gets retired: it has been in rotation long enough that exposure is too high, it tested poorly on psychometric review, or the underlying clinical guidance has shifted.

The third bucket is small but real. A handful of released items reference older infection-control protocols, pre-2020 anticoagulation guidance, or imaging recommendations that have since been updated. If you are revising from a textbook published in the last two years and a released-item key contradicts you, trust the textbook and flag the question. Do not let a retired item teach you outdated practice.

This is also why released questions alone are not enough. The live AFK is biased toward current guidelines, current materials science, and current pharmacology. Released items get you to roughly the 70th percentile of preparation; closing the gap to a comfortable pass requires modern question exposure on top.

Combining Released Items With Modern Mocks

The honest framing is that released questions and a modern bank like Lumen's are complements, not substitutes. Here is how they compare on the dimensions that matter for AFK pass-rate.

Dimension	NDEB Released Bank	Lumen AFK Bank
Authorship	Official NDEB item-writers	Canadian dental clinicians, NDEB-aligned
Item count	~1,500-plus	2,000-plus, growing
Rationales	None — answer keys only	Full rationales for every option
Currency	Mixed; some items 10+ years	Updated to current guidelines
Difficulty calibration	Slightly easier than live	Tuned to live-exam difficulty
Adaptive review	None — flat PDF	Spaced repetition, weakness tracking
Cost	Free	See pricing

The pattern that works: released questions for style, Lumen for breadth, rationales, and current guidance. Candidates who run both in parallel through an eight-to-twelve week prep window consistently report the smoothest exam-day experience.

Building a Spaced-Repetition Workflow Around Them

The released PDF is not interactive, which is its biggest weakness as a study tool. A simple workflow fixes that:

• Maintain a personal miss log — a spreadsheet with columns for question number, blueprint domain, the concept, and the date you missed it.
• Re-test missed items at increasing intervals: day 3, day 7, day 14, day 30. This is the standard spaced-repetition cadence and it works whether you build it in Anki, in a Google Sheet, or inside Lumen, where the interval scheduling is automated.
• Tag each miss as a knowledge gap or a reading error. Knowledge gaps need study; reading errors need slower test-taking, not more content.
• Once you have hit any item correctly twice in a row at 14-day spacing, retire it from active review.

Most candidates skip the miss log because it feels like overhead. It is the single highest-leverage study habit on the AFK exam.

Topic-by-Topic Distribution of the Released Bank

Below is a rough distribution of the released items by AFK blueprint domain. Counts are approximate — the NDEB has reissued the PDF several times and exact totals shift between versions — but the relative weighting has been stable across recent compilations.

Blueprint domain	Approx. items	Share of bank
Applied sciences (anatomy, physio, etc.)	~210	~14%
Oral diagnosis and oral medicine	~180	~12%
Pharmacology	~135	~9%
Periodontics	~120	~8%
Endodontics	~110	~7%
Operative dentistry	~120	~8%
Prosthodontics (fixed and removable)	~150	~10%
Oral and maxillofacial surgery	~120	~8%
Oral radiology	~90	~6%
Paediatric dentistry	~105	~7%
Orthodontics	~75	~5%
Behavioural sciences and ethics	~60	~4%
Infection control and public health	~30	~2%

Compare this distribution against your own confidence map after the week-1 triage. If you are weak in a domain that holds 10 per cent of the bank, you are looking at a meaningful share of exam-day risk; if you are weak in a 4 per cent domain, you can afford a lighter pass.

Not sure which domains to prioritise? Run the free Lumen diagnostic — it benchmarks you against the same blueprint distribution and tells you where the marginal hour is best spent.

FAQ

Where can I find AFK released questions? The official NDEB Released Test Item Bank is hosted as a free PDF on ndeb-bned.ca, under the AFK candidate preparation resources. Always download from the NDEB site directly rather than from third-party mirrors, which often host older revisions with outdated answer keys.

Are released questions enough to pass the AFK? For most candidates, no. The released bank is calibrated slightly easier than the live exam and excludes recent guideline updates. Candidates who pass on released questions alone tend to be those with strong recent Canadian clinical exposure. Most internationally trained dentists pair the released bank with a modern resource like the Lumen AFK bank and a structured study plan.

How many questions are in the NDEB released bank? Approximately 1,500-plus, depending on which version of the PDF you have. The NDEB has reissued the document several times since the early 2000s; recent compilations consolidate items from multiple testing cycles into a single file.

Are released questions the same as the real exam? No, but they are stylistically closer than any third-party material. Released items were written by NDEB item-writers and appeared on real AFK exams in earlier cycles. They are retired now, so you will not see them again, but the distractor logic, stem length, and difficulty profile mirror what is on the live test.

Can I share AFK released questions with a study group? Yes. The PDF is published by the NDEB specifically as a candidate resource and there are no restrictions on sharing within a study group. Reuploading the file to public sites or selling it is not appropriate, but circulating it among classmates and discussing items together is exactly how the NDEB intends it to be used.

How long does it take to work through the entire released bank? Allow roughly 60 to 80 hours of focused study to work through 1,500-plus items with miss-log review. That maps to about eight weeks at two hours a day, six days a week — the cadence the workflow above is built around.

Should I memorise the answer keys? No. Memorising keys gives you a false sense of mastery and does not transfer to new items on exam day. Treat every released item as a chance to test the underlying concept; if you can explain the answer to a peer in two sentences, you actually know it.

Where does the released bank fit if I am still in the equivalency process? Start the released bank as soon as you are eligible to sit the AFK and have a target date within four to six months. Earlier than that, the items will fade from memory before exam day. While you wait, the Lumen blog and the broader equivalency guide are better use of the time.

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The released item bank is not a secret weapon. It is a free, publicly-listed PDF that every NDEB candidate has equal access to. The candidates who get the most out of it are simply the ones who treat it as a curriculum rather than a quiz. Run the eight-week workflow, keep a miss log, and pair it with current material — and the AFK starts to feel like a test you have already seen.

If you want to see how Lumen layers on top of the released bank, the free diagnostic is the fastest way in. It is twenty minutes, no card required, and it returns a domain-by-domain readiness map calibrated against the same blueprint the released bank reflects. For benchmarking, the 2026 AFK pass-rate breakdown is also worth reading alongside this guide.