Hello and welcome to our article on the Situational Judgement section of the UCAT.
Our aim here is to explain everything you need to know and understand about Situational Judgement, including a few explained practice questions to help you get more of a feel for it.
This article is split into lots of small, easy to understand sections so we don’t end up bombarding you with too much information.
What is the UCAT?
The UCAT is the ‘University Clinical Aptitude Test’, a 2-hour exam sat between July 1st and October 1st, just before you send off your medical or dental school application.
The UCAT is part of the entry requirements for many medical and dental schools in the UK and aims to set apart applicants based on mental aptitude rather than academic knowledge.
The test consists of 5 sections which are all weighted slightly differently. These sections are:
Introduction to Situational Judgement
Situational Judgement is the final section of the UCAT and works pretty differently to the others. It assesses your ability to understand situations (often in clinical workplaces) and determine the most appropriate action for each. This section presents you with a tricky situation and requires you to judge the most appropriate course of action.
This section doesn’t require any previous academic knowledge, it basically just tests your common sense. According to the UCAT website, the test assesses several qualities:
- Integrity
- Perspective-taking
- Teamwork
- Resilience
- Adaptability
All of these qualities are vitally important for doctors and dentists, especially in the clinical environment. They rely on your ability to understand other people’s opinions and beliefs of how certain situations should work and balance them against your own.
The situations are often things that in real life would throw you far out of your comfort zone, and they want to assess your ability to stay level-headed and think logically about the best course of action.
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Why is Situational Judgement included?
Situational Judgement is a huge concept in medicine and dentistry, and a key skill needed for all prospective and current medical/dentistry students. It’s something you’ll come across throughout your entire career, and something you’re likely to use more often than you’d think.
When you sit your medical/dental school finals (in 5th or 6th year), you’re often required to sit the ‘SJT’ (Situational Judgement Test), the most important exam in your time at university. The results of this make up 50% of your final ranking for Foundation Jobs, which really demonstrates how important it is.
Even after you graduate, Situational Judgement tests are used in selection exams for many specialities, including GPs. Your ability to deal with difficult situations, both with your colleagues and with patients, will constantly be tested and good medical practice requires you to deal with these problems appropriately.
If you are not able to respond in an appropriate way, or a way that other doctors or dentists agree they would do in that situation, it can cause a number of problems and get you in trouble! That being said, most prospective medical/dentistry students are level-headed and sensible and are often good at judging what is or isn’t appropriate in certain situations.
However, some people really have no idea, and this is quite a worrying sign for someone who could be placed in a difficult clinical environment and be required to interact with patients and staff. The qualities listed above (integrity, resilience, adaptability etc.) are arguably the most important qualities a doctor can have, and it’s key that you have the foundations to build on before you even get to Medical or Dentistry School.
Doctors in Miami faced an ethical dilemma with a man who had “DO NOT RESUSCITATE”, along with his signature, tattooed on his chest. Source.
What are Situational Judgement questions like?
The Situational Judgement section is made up of 22 scenarios, with a total of 69 questions. Each scenario question will be associated with up to 5 most appropriate/important style answers or multiple-choice questions.
Most appropriate/important style answers
With most appropriate/important style answers, you will (unsurprisingly) be required to choose the “most appropriate” or “most important” answer to the situation presented.
Multiple-choice questions
With multiple-choice answers, you will be required to drag and drop a choice of answers into their respective slots or rank the answers in order of importance or appropriateness.
Starting in 2022, you will find a third format of question, based upon the most appropriate/important style. In these questions, you will be given a collection of factors relating to a scenario (typically 3). From these, you will need to determine which is the most and least appropriate/important factor within the context given.
As stated above, you have 22 and a half seconds to answer each question. At first, this may not seem like much, but once you’ve read the scenario and the answer options, you can usually rank them pretty quickly (it definitely won’t take over 20 seconds). If you aren’t sure, it’s worth going with your gut feeling, flagging the question and reviewing it if you have time at the end.
Situational Judgement Example Question
Each Situational Judgement question will present you with a short passage of text (50-150 words) that gives you a scenario to put yourself in. Below is an example Situational Judgement question. This particular question is an “importance” ranking question.
Situational Judgement Answer Types
Some questions ask about the appropriateness of actions, whereas others ask what the most important considerations are for the situation. Each question will either:
Type 1 – Ask you to choose the most appropriate or most important answer.
Type 2 – Ask you to rank them from most to least appropriate/important for that specific situation by dragging and dropping the most and least appropriate/important answers.
Here’s a little more detail about these two answer types:
TYPE #1
| Most Appropriate | Most Important |
|---|---|
| A Very Appropriate Thing To Do This is the very best option out of the ones presented to you. | Very Important This is the most valuable response and means it considers critical elements of the situations. |
| Appropriate, But Not Ideal A reasonable option, but not necessarily the best one available. | Important A good response that you should consider, but isn’t vitally important. |
| Inappropriate, But Not Awful Not the ideal option as it’s not great, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. | Of Minor Importance Something to take into consideration but won’t affect the outcome of the situation if not considered. |
| A Very Inappropriate Thing To Do This is the response that definitely shouldn’t be taken and would likely worsen the situation. | Not Important At All This is usually something that is not relevant and not important to resolving the scenario. |
TYPE #2
You’ll be given three possible actions and be asked to rank them from most to least appropriate for that specific situation, whilst others will ask you to rate the four answer options.
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Worked Example Situational Judgement Practice Question & Answer
Situational Judgement Practice Question
Scenario: You are a third-year medical student shadowing a doctor on the wards. They ask you to go and take a history from a patient by yourself and report back whilst they go and see another patient. Mid-way through your history taking, the patient starts to ask questions too as they don’t fully understand why you’re there and talking to them. They ask several personal questions about where you live, your family etc. You are unsure about how much information you are allowed to disclose without crossing the professionalism boundary.
Rate the following based on how appropriate they are to the situation:
Question 1: Speak to the patient openly about your life:
- A very appropriate thing to do
- Appropriate, but not ideal
- Inappropriate, but not awful
- A very inappropriate thing to do
Question 2: Explain that you aren’t just there for a chat and have been asked by the doctor to see them:
- A very appropriate thing to do
- Appropriate, but not ideal
- Inappropriate, but not awful
- A very inappropriate thing to do
Question 3: Politely answer their questions without going into too much detail and moving on with your task:
- A very appropriate thing to do
- Appropriate, but not ideal
- Inappropriate, but not awful
- A very inappropriate thing to do
Careful scrolling beyond this point if you are working through the question yourself!
Situational Judgement Worked Solution
Answer For Question 1: A very inappropriate thing to do
- You should not disclose personal details to patients if you can help it.
- Bear in mind that your full name is on your ID, and some patients will think it’s okay to look you up on social media (it’s not).
- You should maintain professionalism at all time and remember the task at hand.
Answer For Question 2: Appropriate, but not ideal
- It’s important to maintain a good relationship with your patients. If you don’t, they are much less likely to disclose important information about how they’re feeling etc.
- When you’re on a busy ward it’s important to focus on the task at hand, so it’s appropriate to explain this to the patient as long as it’s in a polite or casual way.
Answer For Question 3: A very appropriate thing to do
- As long as you’re comfortable, you can ‘chat’ with patients about yourself as long as you don’t become too comfortable and disclose any deeply personal information.
- Giving short, polite answers to ‘chatty’ questions are good for maintaining patient rapport but also not wasting too much time when you have a task to complete.
How is it scored?
Situational Judgement is scored completely differently from the other sections of the UCAT and isn’t included in your total score. For each question, you’re awarded full marks if your answer is the correct answer and partial marks if it’s near the correct one.
The correct answers for this test are determined by a panel of ‘experts’ (i.e. medical and other professionals). The results of this section are given in Bands 1-4, with Band 1 being the best and Band 4 being the worst. The band descriptions are as follows:
BAND 1
The highest level means that most of your answers match those chosen by the panel of experts. The candidate shows an ‘excellent level of performance’.
BAND 2
The candidate shows a ‘good’ level of performance. If you’re given band 2 it means that a good deal of your answers match those from the expert panel and make the ‘appropriate judgements frequently’.
BAND 3
The candidate shows a ‘moderate’ level of performance. It means that you got the most appropriate answer for some questions, but a lot of your answers were slightly different or didn’t match that of the expert panel.
BAND 4
This is the lowest band attainable. It means that your answers are substantially different from those given by the expert panel, and you have not shown an appropriate judgement for most situations.
Below is a table showing the percentage of students in each Band over the past few years.
| Band | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 14% | 31% | 17% | 21% | 28% | 26% |
| 2 | 36% | 37% | 40% | 34% | 42% | 44% |
| 3 | 33% | 23% | 33% | 32% | 21% | 22% |
| 4 | 16% | 9% | 10% | 13% | 9% | 9% |
Situational Judgement Usage By Universities
As with your total UCAT score, each university uses your Situational Judgement result differently. Some schools, such as Birmingham and Bristol, don’t use your band from this section at all in their selection criteria but use the total score for the UCAT.
Other universities, such as Dundee and Hull York, specify that you won’t be invited for interview if you end up in Band 4. For further information, you should visit the specific university website and see their UCAT marking/usage criteria.
How To Prepare
As with all sections of the UCAT, it’s difficult to just ‘revise’ as you would with a normal school exam. Situational Judgement requires a degree of common sense and empathy skills to allow you to understand the views of others in these tricky situations.
You’re likely to have come across a real-life situation where you’ve needed to use the skills for Situational Judgement, especially if you’ve done any work in a team and encountered any problems along the way. However, to really understand what’s required of you in a medical Situational Judgement test, it’s really, really important to have a read over the General Medical Council’s ‘Good Medical Practice’ leaflet or web page.
This page lists all the requirements of a doctor and describes how they are expected to act in certain situations. The GMC is the governing body for UK doctors and regulates your ability to practice, so there really is no better place to go for this.
Top Tips for UCAT Situational Judgement
As always, here are our top tips to nail the Situational Judgement of the UCAT. By far the most important tip to take note of is #1 – GMC quite literally wrote the book on good medical practice so it’s required reading to understand Situational Judgement. Much of the information in it will also be relevant to dentistry students too!
1. Read the GMC’s ‘Good Medical Practice’ guidelines.
For the medical scenarios you’ll come across, this information will be invaluable and give you a really strong foundation on which to deduce the most appropriate answer.
2. Know your priorities.
Remember that some actions are more appropriate than others, and some factors are more important than others.
3. Don’t think of the extremes.
Don’t assume that everything is either ‘Most Appropriate’ or ‘Not At All Appropriate’, some answers won’t be the first thing you do but are still important, so will be somewhere in the middle.
4. Practice, practice, pratice!
As always, practice questions and tests are your best friend – when you go to mark these, make sure you read the reasoning for the answers properly as it will explain more what they’re looking for.
5. Take your time.
Read the scenarios carefully, you don’t want to miss any important factors.
6. Know the format.
Know your timing before you start so you’re not thrown on test day.
There are plenty more tips to learn that will help you through the UCAT. Check them out in our UCAT Top Tips Guide!
Closing Notes
Thanks for reading this article, we hope it gives you a good overview of the Situational Judgement of the UCAT and how to do well in it. Everything works slightly differently from the other sections of the UCAT, so it’s important to understand what you need to do and how to ace it.
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Prepare yourself for the whole UCAT with comprehensive resources, an expert preparation course and full access to UCAT.Ninja, available as soon as you sign up.
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Get support for all 5 UCAT sections with 6med.
Prepare yourself for the UCAT with one-to-one tuition from a UCAT expert, as well as comprehensive resources, an expert preparation course and full access to UCAT.Ninja, available as soon as you sign up.
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