Top 5 UCAT Situational Judgement Tips

When you start medical school, you will quickly get familiar with the General Medical Council’s Good Medical Practice - a code of conduct for all medical students and healthcare professionals. If you want to prepare well for the Situational Judgement subtest, you can already have a read through it, and familiarise yourself with its concept. Good Medical Practice outlines the key principles that a medical professional should follow and those often underpin the appropriate reaction to various ethical situations that you mind find yourself in.

As such, having read through it will help you become more aware of what’s expected of you at the Situational Judgement test and will help you identify the correct answers quicker.

A common trap applicants fall in when they first start preparing for the Situational Judgement test is that they answer questions in the way they think is appropriate to act. It is very important at that moment to remind yourself that in these scenarios, you are acting as a medical student or even sometimes, as a senior doctor on the ward. What would that person do? What would the examiners who have written these questions expect you to do? What would they themselves do?

The more you practice and the more you learn, hopefully the answers to the two questions “What would you do?” and “What would the examiner do?” become one and the same, but even at this early stage it is important that you are able to demonstrate understanding into the appropriateness of the actions of a healthcare professional in certain ethical situations.

Some questions will provide you with a response and then ask you whether that response has been “Very appropriate”, “Appropriate, but not ideal”, “Inappropriate, but not awful” or “Very inappropriate”. If you get confused and still don’t know what the best answer on a particular question is, try to identify at least which side you lean on - the appropriate or inappropriate one.

Even if you don’t answer the question entirely accurately, you’d get half a point for identifying which of the two it is. So if the correct answer was “Very appropriate” but you answered “Appropriate, but not ideal”, you’d still be awarded some points. Don’t underestimate this and always try to identify what side of the argument you think is correct, even if you don’t know exactly to what extent.

The more you spend on a question, the more likely you are that you will overlook the correct answer and overthink the situation, taking into account many things that do not play a role in the scenario and ultimately pick the wrong answer. Try and follow your instinct and if you feel an answer is correct, you are probably right. It is very easy to overthink these scenarios and get bogged down into minor details, identifying aspects of the scenario that are probably unimportant - as a general rule, the Situational Judgement questions are not trying to trick you, so pick an answer and move on.

To answer 69 questions in 26 minutes, you would have to go through this section relatively quickly. There won’t be much time left for second-guessing your answers, so you will have to firmly answer each question and swiftly move on to the next. The best way to prepare for the Situational Judgement is practice tests. The more you practice, the clearer the expectations from the questions will be to you and the more familiar you will become with various situations, which will help you on test day, as you might be given situations that you already know how you would respond in! The UCAT course we offer is a great place to start, with plenty of tips and lots of practice questions!