Introduction to Situational Judgement:

• Situational Judgement measures your capacity to understand real-world situations and identify crucial factors and appropriate behaviour in dealing with them
• It assesses the key traits of integrity, perspective-taking and team involvement
• SJTs are used widely in medical selection, including selection of foundation doctors, GPs and other medical specialities
• Questions ask for the appropriateness of a response in a scenario or the importance of a factor in making a decision
• SJT measures your ability to assess real-life scenarios and choose the correct response to a situation
• Patient safety is at the heart of what doctors do and is the most important thing so it should never be jeopardised
• To do well, you should be able to understand the following principles: medical professionalism, compassion, confidentiality, patient autonomy and integrity
• It is a good idea to read the GMC guidelines and work through a few pages a day to get a good understanding of what is expected of a doctor and understand the basic principles and theory
• You have 26 minutes to answer 69 questions with 22 scenarios, so 23 seconds per question

Question Types:

• There are 3 question types and these are
  • Type 1: Appropriateness
  • Type 2: Importance
  • Type 3: Appropriateness by ranking

Type 1 - Appropriateness:

• You are given a scenario and different responses are taken and you will have to decide if the action is either
  • A very appropriate thing to do:
  • Appropriate but not ideal: Not an optimal approach but there are no negative consequences. Although it can be done, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is a good thing to do
  • Inappropriate but not awful: It shouldn’t be done but if it did occur it would not be a terrible scenario. It is not a good approach but will have minimal potential negative consequences
  • A very inappropriate thing to do: It is a poor approach with potential negative consequences to patients or public confidence in the profession. It definitely should not occur and it would make the situation worse

Type 2 Importance:

• You are given a scenario and told different factors and you will have to decide if the action is either
  • Very important: If this is something that is absolutely essential to consider. It simply cannot be dismissed such as patient safety
  • Important: If this is something that is important but not absolutely essential to consider. It is not vital but may actually make a difference
  • Of minor importance: If this is something that could potentially be taken into account, but it does not matter if it is taken into account or not. Mildly relevant in the decision-making process
  • Not important at all: It has no impact on the care of the patient

Type 3 - Appropriateness by ranking:

• You are given three possible responses to a scenario and you have to choose two that are most appropriate and least appropriate
• This is a new style added to the exam so you may not see it on online question banks
• Type 3 questions are rare: There are usually only 4 questions at the end of the exam with this style of question and it uses the same principles as Type 1