Entry to obstetrics and gynaecology training in Australia is through a standardised panel interview, the same questions to every candidate, scored against the selection criteria, with a move to a multiple mini interview planned from the 2028 intake. The criteria are clinical experience, communication, teamwork, research and audit, and commitment to women's health including rural practice, and the questions follow from them. This guide covers what recurs and what the panels score.
Motivation and commitment
- Why obstetrics and gynaecology, and what have you done to prepare for it?
- Tell us about your experience in O&G and the procedures and deliveries you have been involved in.
- What do you know about the RANZCOG training programme, its rural requirements and its examinations?
- O&G has demanding on call and high medicolegal exposure. How will you sustain a career in it?
- Tell us about an audit or research project relevant to women's health.
- Which areas of the specialty interest you most?
Panels score evidence: the O&G terms, the deliveries, the procedures assisted and performed, the diploma if held, the audit on the labour ward, the rural placement. Know the programme: the length, the rural requirement, the written and oral examinations, the procedural log. Answer the sustainability question with a strategy, because the panel has watched trainees leave.
The obstetric emergencies
At registrar level, usually with reading time:
- A woman is bleeding heavily after delivery and the loss is now 1.5 litres, then the uterus is contracted and she is still bleeding.
- A woman at 36 weeks with a blood pressure of 170 over 110, a headache and brisk reflexes.
- A shoulder dystocia at a delivery you are attending.
- A cord prolapse on the labour ward.
- A woman at 32 weeks with painless vaginal bleeding.
- Severe lower abdominal pain, a positive pregnancy test and a blood pressure of 85.
- A fetal heart rate trace with late decelerations.
- A woman at term with a breech presentation.
- A woman in labour with a temperature of 38.5.
- Heavy menstrual bleeding with a haemoglobin of 70.
Structure: call for help early, the protocol with the specifics (the drugs and doses for the haemorrhage, the magnesium and antihypertensives for pre eclampsia, the manoeuvres for shoulder dystocia in order, the position and the theatre call for the cord prolapse), the decision, the consultant and the anaesthetist, and the conversation with the woman and her partner. For the haemorrhage that continues with a contracted uterus, say what you look for next: trauma, retained tissue, coagulopathy, and the escalation to theatre and the massive transfusion protocol.
The communication scenarios
An assessor plays the woman or the couple:
- A woman has just had a stillbirth at 38 weeks. Begin the conversation.
- A woman at 39 weeks wants a caesarean without a medical indication.
- A woman refuses a recommended induction.
- A couple are angry about a delay in their emergency caesarean.
- Explaining a miscarriage at a first scan.
SPIKES for the losses, with silence allowed. For the requests and refusals, explore the reasons, give the evidence plainly, respect the decision, and document. For the angry couple, acknowledge, listen, explain without defending, and offer the complaints process.
Ethics and cultural safety
- A woman with capacity refuses a caesarean you believe is needed for the baby's safety.
- How would you provide culturally safe maternity care to an Aboriginal woman from a remote community?
- A woman requests termination and a colleague refuses to be involved.
- You discover a colleague did not obtain consent properly.
- A woman discloses family violence in an antenatal visit.
The woman's autonomy is the governing principle, the law on termination and conscientious objection in your state must be known, and family violence disclosure has a pathway you should be able to describe.
Teamwork and the midwives
The panel will ask how you work with midwives, because the labour ward is their ward. An example of a midwife whose judgement changed your plan scores; an example where you overruled one does not.
What the panels score
Protocol level knowledge of the emergencies with early escalation, communication that can sit with loss and respect refusal, autonomy and the law, cultural safety in action, respect for midwives, and evidence of commitment. The common failures are forgetting to call for help in the emergency and arguing with the woman who refuses.
Preparing
The ten emergencies aloud with the protocols. The five communication scenarios with someone staying in role. The ethics scenarios with your state's law. Then a timed run of the standardised panel, and from the 2028 intake the same questions as stations.