The ST3 Plastics Structured Interview
How the ST3 Plastic Surgery structured interview works: the themes you can be asked about, what examiners assess, and how to prepare answers that use real examples.
On this page
No patients, no emergencies, and still ten minutes that carry a quarter of your interview score. The structured interview closes the ST3 Plastic Surgery interview with two or three questions on non-clinical themes. There is no right answer to recite. What earns marks is a real example, told with structure, finished with honest reflection.
What actually happens
A panel member picks a small number of questions from a pool of themes and asks them in turn. After your answer comes the probing: which part was your work, what was the outcome, what would you do differently. They are not testing recall. They are testing whether you have actually done the things on your CV and understood them.
The themes
- Audit and quality improvement: a project you ran, and its impact.
- Research and publications: your involvement and understanding.
- Teaching: what you have taught and how you improved it.
- Risk and safety: a time you improved patient safety.
- Leadership and management: leading a team or a change.
- Ethics and consent: reasoning through a dilemma.
- Commitment to the specialty: why plastic surgery, evidenced.
Where candidates lose marks
Generalities. “I believe teaching is very important” earns nothing; a teaching session you redesigned after feedback earns marks. The other trap is describing what the team did without ever saying what you did, and stopping at description when the question wanted reflection.
How to prepare
Build a bank of two or three concrete examples per theme, structured with STAR (situation, task, action, result) and finished with what you took from it. Then rehearse them out loud until they fit comfortably in a spoken answer, because an example that reads well on paper often rambles at interview pace. You can rehearse the structured interview with an AI panel on Reviva, which probes your answers the way the real panel does.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the structured interview in the ST3 plastics interview?
- A 10-minute section in which a panel member asks two or three structured questions on non-clinical themes such as audit, research, teaching, leadership, ethics, and your commitment to the specialty. There is no single right answer; you are assessed on structure, examples, and depth.
- What themes come up in the structured interview?
- Audit, research, teaching, risk and safety, leadership and management, consent, ethics, and career and commitment to plastic surgery.
- How do I prepare for the structured interview?
- Prepare real, specific examples for each theme and a framework to structure them (STAR works well). Practise saying them out loud, concisely, and be ready to reflect on what you learned rather than just describing what you did.
Sources. Based on the ST3 Plastic Surgery selection format modelled by Reviva and the national selection marking scheme. Educational only. Confirm the current format against the official national recruitment portal.