SITUATIONAL JUDGEMENT TEST |
The situational judgement test is a new exam that you have to sit on Dec 7th 2012 or Jan 7th 2013. Check carefully which exam you are scheduled to sit. It consists of 70 questions in 2h 20 minutes giving you 2 minutes per question. Two thirds of the questions will be ranking questions where you will be asked to rank five possible responses in the most appropriate order. One third of the questions will ask you to choose the three most appropriate responses for a given situation.
The examples here are written by us based on the official mock exam
Ranking question
You are the colorectal surgical FY1. Your surgical registrar asks you to consent the patient for a simple incision and drainage of a subcutaneous abscess as he is scrubbed in theatre. You have never performed the procedure before.
Rank in order the following actions in response to this situation (1 = Most appropriate, 5 = Least appropriate)
A. Look the procedure and its risks up on the internet and consent the patient
B. Ask advice from your SHO
C. Call your consultant for advice and find out if it is appropriate for you to consent
D. Explain to the registrar that you are unable to take consent as an FY1 and you have never performed th eprocedure therefore aren't competent to do so
E. Ignore what the registrar has asked until you have finished checking all the bloods on the ward, and then talk to him about the consent process
The examples here are written by us based on the official mock exam
Ranking question
You are the colorectal surgical FY1. Your surgical registrar asks you to consent the patient for a simple incision and drainage of a subcutaneous abscess as he is scrubbed in theatre. You have never performed the procedure before.
Rank in order the following actions in response to this situation (1 = Most appropriate, 5 = Least appropriate)
A. Look the procedure and its risks up on the internet and consent the patient
B. Ask advice from your SHO
C. Call your consultant for advice and find out if it is appropriate for you to consent
D. Explain to the registrar that you are unable to take consent as an FY1 and you have never performed th eprocedure therefore aren't competent to do so
E. Ignore what the registrar has asked until you have finished checking all the bloods on the ward, and then talk to him about the consent process
How the marking works for the Ranking questions
If the answer to a ranking question was CDBEA
Each question is scored out of 20, so for each of your 5 responses can score up to 4 marks. If an answer should have ideally been ranked 1, C in the example table, and you ranked it 2 you will score 3 marks out of 4. If you ranked it 4 you’ll only score 1 mark. Let us know if more explanation is needed.
Advice
Don’t give the same rank to two answers as both will score 0. You see you score 3 marks if you are nearly right anyway, so if you’re not sure which of two responses is more appropriate then just pick one to be given the higher rank. Don't take too long deciding between two similarly appropriate responses as not finishing the paper will really hurt your score.
The importance of finishing all the questions and ensuring you don’t give any response the same rank (therefore scoring 0) can't be overstated. We predict that people who fail to finish the paper because of taking too long deliberating over an answer will score badly, therefore keep to the 2 minutes per question time limit, regardless of how difficult it is to make a decision between two answers - they'll probably both score 3 anyway if you get the order slightly wrong.
Approach to the ranking questions
We suggest you read the question, and try to imagine yourself actually in that scenario. Next read the answers from A to E and try to identify an answer that is the most correct and one that is obviously incorrect. Rank these 1 (most correct) and 5 (obviously incorrect). Finally decide on the relative ranking of the answers in between and rank them 2-4. If you're finding it difficult to decide on the order of two responses, and often it will be difficult, we recommend going with your first or gut reaction as its often the correct one.
Multiple choice question
Multiple Choice question
The nurse on your ward comes to you with a drug chart telling you that you prescribed co-amoxiclav despite the chart saying the patient is allergic to penicillin. She has already given the drug
Choose the THREE most appropriate actions to take in this situation
A. Report the nurse to the ward sister as she has made a grave error in giving the drug
B. Assess the patient to ensure that they are not having an anaphylactic or allergic reaction
C. Inform your consultant of the error immediately
D. Shout at the nurse, and tell her she should not have given the drug without checking the patient's allergies
E. Inform the senior pharmacist of the error
F. Escalate the error to the medical director
G. Cross off coamoxiclav to ensure it wont be given again and seek advice from microbiology about what to prescribe instead
H. Ask your SPR for advice after assessing the patient and ensuring you have their recent observations available
Advice
Don’t give the same rank to two answers as both will score 0. You see you score 3 marks if you are nearly right anyway, so if you’re not sure which of two responses is more appropriate then just pick one to be given the higher rank. Don't take too long deciding between two similarly appropriate responses as not finishing the paper will really hurt your score.
The importance of finishing all the questions and ensuring you don’t give any response the same rank (therefore scoring 0) can't be overstated. We predict that people who fail to finish the paper because of taking too long deliberating over an answer will score badly, therefore keep to the 2 minutes per question time limit, regardless of how difficult it is to make a decision between two answers - they'll probably both score 3 anyway if you get the order slightly wrong.
Approach to the ranking questions
We suggest you read the question, and try to imagine yourself actually in that scenario. Next read the answers from A to E and try to identify an answer that is the most correct and one that is obviously incorrect. Rank these 1 (most correct) and 5 (obviously incorrect). Finally decide on the relative ranking of the answers in between and rank them 2-4. If you're finding it difficult to decide on the order of two responses, and often it will be difficult, we recommend going with your first or gut reaction as its often the correct one.
Multiple choice question
Multiple Choice question
The nurse on your ward comes to you with a drug chart telling you that you prescribed co-amoxiclav despite the chart saying the patient is allergic to penicillin. She has already given the drug
Choose the THREE most appropriate actions to take in this situation
A. Report the nurse to the ward sister as she has made a grave error in giving the drug
B. Assess the patient to ensure that they are not having an anaphylactic or allergic reaction
C. Inform your consultant of the error immediately
D. Shout at the nurse, and tell her she should not have given the drug without checking the patient's allergies
E. Inform the senior pharmacist of the error
F. Escalate the error to the medical director
G. Cross off coamoxiclav to ensure it wont be given again and seek advice from microbiology about what to prescribe instead
H. Ask your SPR for advice after assessing the patient and ensuring you have their recent observations available
How the marking works for multiple choice questions
12 points are available for each question, 4 for each of the 3 most appropriate answers. Everything else scores 0. This makes this type of question more discriminating as getting one of the three wrong scores 8/12, whereas in the ranking question, misranking 2 answers may still score between 16-18/20.
Advice
Don’t select more than 3 as that will score 0 for the whole question even if the top three answers are chosen, and don’t choose just 2 as you’ll be missing out on 4 handy marks.
Approach
There are normally one or two answers that are obviously correct and then a few that could all be appropriate. Try to choose what you would actually do in the situation, as it will tend to be the correct response.
Like in the ranking questions, don't linger too long tryng to decide between two answers, as it will mean you might not complete the test!
How to prepare
It's difficult not to worry about this exam - as your comments have shown us there's a lot of anxiety already out there. It is obviously very important as it could determine where your job will be, but worrying will not help. We advise you forget about it completely until around November after you've had a decent break since submitting the form. Remember official advice is that you can't revise for this exam... however ...
Read through the tips on how to approach the different questions above
Practice some questions early without checking what the answer is. We recommend you use the official mock exam for this.
Now go through the explanations for their answers to work out what the rationale behind the ideal answer is. No doubt at times you'll disagree with their rationale, we certainly did on around 5 occasions and we've the benefit of real life ward experience, but its important to get a feel for what they are looking for.
It's difficult not to worry about this exam - as your comments have shown us there's a lot of anxiety already out there. It is obviously very important as it could determine where your job will be, but worrying will not help. We advise you forget about it completely until around November after you've had a decent break since submitting the form. Remember official advice is that you can't revise for this exam... however ...
Read through the tips on how to approach the different questions above
Practice some questions early without checking what the answer is. We recommend you use the official mock exam for this.
Now go through the explanations for their answers to work out what the rationale behind the ideal answer is. No doubt at times you'll disagree with their rationale, we certainly did on around 5 occasions and we've the benefit of real life ward experience, but its important to get a feel for what they are looking for.