Obstetrics and Gynaecology ST1 Interview Guide 2024/2025

As September rolls around, many of you are gearing towards your Obs and Gynae ST1 speciality interview for the February intake. If you have been called for an interview, congrats!

That is half the struggle after all.

Now it’s only a few weeks of prep and you are looking at starting your journey in the specialty of your choice. Having been in your place not too long ago, I know what that’s like.

If you are looking for guidance on how and where to start, you’re in the right place, so let’s dive right in.

Key Resources

Obs & Gynae ST1 Recruitment Timeline

Check the schedule for crucial dates during the selection process on the recruitment timetable.

February 2025 Start Date (Round 3)

August 2025 Start Date (Round 1)

Interview Format

The interview has been entirely online for the past several years.

The interview conducted by HEE is around 25-30 minutes and consists of 2 main parts.

An initial waiting room where you will be greeted, and your ID (passport) checked. You will also be asked to show your room and surroundings, so ensure you’re in an appropriate place and make sure no secret consultant is hiding somewhere in your room.

The proper interview where you will be asked questions in two stations – Clinical prioritisation station and Structured interview station. Each carries equal score weightage.

Station A. Clinical Prioritisation

These are questions that you would be expected to know as an F2 and don’t require in-depth speciality knowledge.

They test your ability to recognise and prioritise the unwell patients and also test you to see if you know how to allocate your resources (like your F1 or the nurse in the ward). They also test whether you know when to escalate and there might even be an ethical concern in one of the cases; essentially they want to see if you are a safe doctor.

You will be given a scenario where:

1. You are the on-call SHO in a hospital
2. You receive four different calls regarding patients with varying urgency including their observations
3. You have a team – this may be an F1 and/or registrars of different specialities.

You are given 5 minutes to read this and prepare.

This is followed by 6 minutes to address the question.

In the 5 minutes, you have to prepare the order of prioritisation order- you can just read out the order as the number or alphabet in the initial question (for example: My priority order would be B, D, C, A) followed by a breakdown of management for each case.

The top priority scenario is worth 12 marks, the second and third are worth 8 marks and the last scenario is worth 4 marks so divide your time accordingly.

In your 6-minute discussion, you will most likely be met with silence on the interviewers’ part other than the occasional encouragement or clarification, so prepare your entire answer to fit the 6 minutes.

I will link some amazing books and sites that helped me prepare for this down below.

Example Clinical Prioritisation Question

Here’s an example of what a Clinical prioritization question may look like:

You are an F2 on-call overnight in a DGH and you receive the following 4 bleeps. You have the following team available in the hospital:

• Obstetric registrar
• Surgical registrar
• F1 doctor

Please read through and discuss with the examiner how you would prioritise these cases.

This question gives you the opportunity to identify the most unstable patient, talk about A to E assessment, management plan such as Sepsis 6, talk about further possible investigations such as USS, escalation, and address ethical concerns like confidentiality.

Search Courses

Station B. Structured Interview

This is the get-to-know-you station in the O&G ST1 interview. Your assessors will ask you questions about you, your experience and about the the O&G training in general. This is the scary part for many people because they worry about this hypothetical interviewer who tsk-tsk-tsks at your answers.

The fact is that interviewers are consultants in your field who genuinely want you to do your best.

In my own interview, I could see one interviewer going the extra mile and nodding encouragingly throughout the interview. While this may not be the case everywhere, they genuinely mean well.

These questions are asked under 4 sections:

Commitment to Speciality

Understanding O&G training is an absolute must here.

If you haven’t looked through it at all, I would suggest going through the RCOG website to understand the overall curriculum and structure in general and have a more detailed idea about the first year (or the first two years, as it is often clubbed). This would include competencies, courses, and exams expected of you that year.

They also expect you to know (and reasonably so), the challenges doctors may face in this specialty, how to deal with the stress, the future of O&G ( recent steps the NHS are taking ), and of course, the evergreen question- why obstetrics and gynaecology.

Something I read in a book (linked below), that helped me here was – you are talking to Obs and Gynae consultants about their speciality. They would love to hear about why their speciality is awesome!

Think about all the different aspects of OBG and why it interests you and have this written out while you prepare.

QI Measures, Research, and Teaching Experience

I have grouped these as they follow the same principle.

This part allows you to talk about the audit/QI project measures you have undertaken and the research, teaching experience, and teaching qualifications that you have so far.

Example Questions

Experience Outside of O&G, Leadership and Team-work

Leadership and teamwork are pretty self-explanatory.

This section may ask you to take examples from your life where you displayed these characteristics. Again, if you have the time, a bit of theoretical knowledge will help improve your answer.

For example, the event “I directed a priority call”, can be made a meaningful answer once you think about ‘What makes a good leader’ or ‘what the difference is between a leader and a team player’.

Tip #5: Although a physical portfolio is not needed in your interview, have a basic one where you list what you have done because I assure you you have done a lot and may not remember all of this off the top of your head.

Interview Scoring

This is the current scoring pattern for the Obstetrics and Gynaecology ST1 interview. Keep your eyes out for updates in future applications – changes for August start dates (round 1) are usually implemented around October, just before application.

There will be two interview panellists assessing you. The scoring given below is the combined total of both panellists.

Preparing for the Interview

Revision prep is about three things:

Useful Books

Here are some of the books and question-bank I found useful for my interview prep:

Medical Interviews (Fourth Edition)

by Oliver Picard, Dan Wood, Sebastian Yuan, Rachael Harlow, and Evelyn Mensah

“A Comprehensive Guide to CT, ST and Registrar Interview Skills – Over 120 Medical Interview Questions, Techniques, and NHS Topics.“

A good book for any speciality interview and can be used throughout your career.

Obstetrics and Gynaecology Interview

Edited by Abbie Lang & Alexander Young

“The Definitive Guide With Over 500 ST Interview Questions For Obstetrics and Gynaecology Interviews: Volume 1 (CT/ST Medical Interview Guides)”

Speciality specific, a good book if you have some time to prepare.

Obstetrics and Gynaecology ST1 Interviews

by Neha Shah, Chawan Baran, Noshali Wimalaweera

Specialty specific and concise, a good choice if you are short on time.

Online Question Banks

Meddibuddy has a useful online Q bank that covers both parts of the interview.

You can check out more Question Banks on the MedCourse Qbank Section, with more being added all the time.

Tips for the Days Leading Up to the Interview