Prepare for the 2026 Genitourinary Medicine ST4 Interview with Structured, Specialty-Specific Practice Questions

Genitourinary Medicine ST4 Interview Questions developed by registrars who achieved high scores in the selection process. This bank covers every part of the PHST interview, from the two 20-minute stations and their clinical and ethical scenarios through to communication and reflective practice, and it is written by GUM registrars who have recently sat and performed well at selection.

“I was successful at interview and the scenarios were very similar to those on the Medibuddy website. The information on Medibuddy was really useful for interview preparation.”

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Updated for 2026

What to Expect from the Genitourinary Medicine ST4 Interview

Genitourinary Medicine ST4 sits at the less competitive end of physician higher specialty training. NHS England’s 2025 competition data recorded 46 applications for 45 posts, a ratio of 1.02:1, with a fill rate of around 41%. That doesn’t make the interview easier: appointability thresholds still apply, and undersubscribed rounds don’t guarantee an offer if scores fall short.

Recruitment runs through the Physician Higher Specialty Training (PHST) process via Oriel. The interview is delivered online as a video interview, with no screen sharing permitted, so presentations are given verbally without slides. The format is confirmed in your invitation and is noted as subject to change. Total interview time is roughly 50 minutes, split across two stations of 20 minutes, each staffed by a separate pair of interviewers. Across the two stations you’ll face four question areas of about 10 minutes each, plus communication skills scored throughout.

Clinical Scenario

You’re given a brief two-to-three-sentence hypothetical scenario with short reading time to make notes, which are destroyed afterwards. About 10 minutes of discussion follows on the steps you’d take, potential treatments, further information you’d seek, and how you’d communicate with patients, families and colleagues. This question is scored twice: once on clinical reasoning, once on communication.

Medical Registrar Question

Reflecting dual accreditation with Internal Medicine (introduced August 2022), this station opens with a strict one-minute spoken presentation summarising your experience managing the acute unselected medical take. Questions then explore two Internal Medicine Stage 1 Capabilities in Practice: managing an acute unselected take, and managing a multidisciplinary team including discharge planning.

Ethical Scenario

A short hypothetical situation, reviewed beforehand, discussed for around 10 minutes. Assessors mark both your response and your grasp of the moral, ethical and legal considerations underpinning it.

Suitability and Commitment

Built around a presentation of up to four minutes on why you want a career in GUM and the evidence supporting your suitability and commitment. Discussion then draws on the length and depth of your career to date. No slides.

What the Panel Is Looking For

Each of the ten scored areas is marked 1–5 against the level expected of a trainee ready to progress. The Raw Interview Score (RIS) sums those marks, so it runs from 10 to 50. To be appointable you must have no score of 1/5, no more than two scores of 2/5, and a RIS of at least 30. A weighting is then applied to both the interview and self-assessment scores (the exact split is not publicly published by PHST) to produce the total selection score used for ranking.

Across every station, panels consistently look for the same qualities: visible enthusiasm for GUM, clinical judgement grounded in both sexual health and acute internal medicine, structured ethical reasoning, and clear communication with colleagues and patients alike.

The Medibuddy 2026 Genitourinary Medicine ST4 Interview Question Bank

We’ve built the question bank around the actual shape of the GUM ST4 interview: clinical scenarios, communication and ethics reasoning through the four principles and GMC Good Medical Practice, reflective practice on clinical incidents and complaints, and the professionalism themes the person specification signals: confidentiality, consent, Gillick and Fraser competence, partner notification and duty of candour.

Coverage is comprehensive across every station you’ll face, with model answers and marker-style feedback pointers. The bank is built by high-scoring GUM registrars who recently sat the interview, and updated each year from fresh candidate feedback so it tracks what panels are actually asking.

What’s Included in the Genitourinary Medicine ST4 Interview Question Bank

How to Prepare for the Genitourinary Medicine ST4 Interview

Preparation for GUM ST4 is different from preparation for a single-panel consultant-style interview. You’re being scored across two stations, four question areas, two spoken presentations and communication skills throughout, all delivered on video with no slides. The prep that works mirrors that structure.

Understand the format before you start practising

Before you rehearse a single answer, internalise the shape of the day. Two stations of 20 minutes each, four question areas of roughly 10 minutes, a separate pair of interviewers per station, and the whole thing delivered as a video interview with no screen-sharing or slides. Two of your answers are timed presentations: a strict one-minute summary of your experience managing the acute unselected medical take, and a presentation of up to four minutes on why you want a career in GUM. The clinical and ethical scenarios come with only a short reading window and two to three sentences of stem. If you don’t know the format cold, you’ll waste seconds of a short station orienting yourself.

Focus on knowledge and delivery equally

Each area is scored 1-5 and feeds a Rank Index Score, and communication skills are marked across the interview. That means a technically correct clinical answer, delivered without structure, loses marks you can’t recover elsewhere. Build the underlying knowledge (sexual health, HIV, IMT Stage 1 Capabilities in Practice, the moral, ethical and legal frameworks the ethics station probes) and then drill delivery: signposting, structured openings, and finishing cleanly within the time.

Build preparation around each station

The four question areas each reward different practice.

Clinical scenario. Practise reading a two-to-three-sentence stem quickly, structuring an assessment, and articulating both your management and how you’d communicate it. Marks come from clinical suggestions and communication together.

Medical registrar question. Rehearse the one-minute spoken summary of your acute unselected take experience until it lands in 60 seconds without notes, then be ready to be probed on acute admissions and on managing a multidisciplinary team including discharge planning.

Ethical scenario. Work through a spread of scenarios covering consent, capacity, confidentiality, safeguarding and duty of candour, and practise verbalising the moral, ethical and legal considerations rather than just landing on an answer.

Suitability and commitment. Draft your up-to-four-minute presentation on why GUM, evidence it with concrete experience (taster days, STASHH, BASHH engagement, clinical exposure), and time it. Going over runs the risk of being cut off; going short leaves marks on the table.

Practise under timed conditions

Because you can’t share a screen, you’re speaking to camera against the clock. Practise on video, out loud, to the exact timings: one minute for the acute take summary, up to four minutes for the suitability presentation, roughly 10 minutes per question area. Record yourself and watch it back. Silent rehearsal in your head consistently overestimates how fluent you sound and underestimates how quickly time passes on the day.

Start earlier than you think

We recommend beginning structured interview prep at least eight to ten weeks before your interview date, though the right lead time will depend on your existing familiarity with the format. That window typically gives candidates time to build the knowledge base, draft and refine both presentations, rehearse across all four question areas, and put in enough timed video practice that the format feels familiar rather than novel.

Tie it all together with the question bank

The principles above only work if you practise against realistic questions in the actual station format. Our GUM ST4 question bank is structured around the two-station, four-area interview, with clinical stems sized to the real reading window, ethical scenarios covering the moral, ethical and legal ground the panel probes, and prompts for both timed presentations. Work through it out loud, to time, on video. That’s the practice that moves your score.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Genitourinary Medicine ST4 interview involve?

The interview is delivered online across two 20-minute stations, each staffed by a separate pair of interviewers. Across the stations you’ll face four question areas of around 10 minutes: a clinical scenario, a medical-registrar question covering the acute unselected take and MDT working, an ethical scenario, and a suitability and commitment question built around a spoken presentation. Communication is assessed throughout. Format is confirmed by the interview invitation.

How competitive is Genitourinary Medicine ST4?

According to NHS England, the 2025 round had 46 applications for 45 posts, giving a competition ratio of 1.02:1, and the fill rate table showed 17 accepts against 41 posts (around 41%). GUM ST4 has been persistently undersubscribed. That does not mean the interview is a formality: candidates still need to hit the appointability threshold across every scored area to be offered a post.

What topics come up in the GUM ST4 interview?

Expect a clinical scenario with a short reading period, a medical-registrar question anchored on the two Internal Medicine Stage 1 CiPs (managing the acute unselected take, and managing an MDT including discharge planning), an ethical scenario with a moral, ethical and legal framing, and a four-minute presentation on why you want a career in GUM. Communication skills are scored across every station.

Does the question bank cover every station in the GUM ST4 interview?

Yes. The bank is built around the actual PHST GUM ST4 format, so it covers all four question areas: clinical scenarios, the acute medicine and MDT registrar question with its one-minute opening summary, ethical scenarios, and the suitability and commitment presentation. Communication practice runs through every scenario, since it’s marked in every station.

When should I start preparing for the GUM ST4 interview?

We recommend starting at least eight to ten weeks out. The presentations, particularly the strict one-minute acute-take summary and the four-minute suitability piece, need repeated timed rehearsal to sound natural. Clinical and ethical scenarios benefit from working through a broad range of cases so structure becomes automatic under 10 minutes of questioning. Starting late tends to show most in the presentations.

Start Preparing for the Genitourinary Medicine ST4 Interview

Most candidates prepare by reading broadly around HIV, sexual health and clinical governance. Strong candidates prepare differently: they rehearse against the exact stations the panel will score them on, out loud and under time. That’s what this bank is built for.