ST3 Trauma and Orthopaedic Interview Clinical Station

Preparation

You should treat the clinical station like an exam. Time is short and interviewers will ask quick-fire questions to test you against the assessed domains.

You will need to be able to manage patients to the level of an ST3 registrar, and time should be spent revising anatomy, clinical management and the key BOA Standards and papers that will help to guide your management.

Scoring

This station is scored out of 50. Interviewers score you out of 10 across five domains:

• Technical Knowledge
• Problem Solving and Decision Making
• Situational Awareness
• Communication – Information Gathering
• Communication – Information Giving

The self-assessment you completed at application adds a further 34 marks, and the four stations plus the self-assessment give a total of 234. See the interview overview for the full scoring matrix.

Top Tips

• The clinical station tests your core understanding of clinical orthopaedics. Together with direct questions you may be asked to describe radiographs, or demonstrate how you would reduce a fracture or examine for a specific pathology.
• Interviewers will ask questions quickly to test how you perform under pressure.
• Patient safety is key, and safe assessment, diagnosis and management of the patient in any given scenario will score you points.
• Make sure you know orthopaedic emergencies, common presentations and musculoskeletal anatomy.
• Anatomy and clinical scenarios can be tough and practise is key. Our ST3 Orthopaedic Interview Question Bank features 396 clinical questions with a focus on anatomy and clinical scenarios, each answerable out loud and marked by AI.