AMC surgery MCQ questions

What the AMC tests in surgery

The AMC's examination specifications describe adult health (surgery) alongside adult medicine: a broad spectrum of adult health and aged care, built on anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology, with current management strategies including investigations, procedural interventions and drug and non-drug treatment. Questions are set at the level of a graduating medical student about to begin the intern year, so they test recognition, investigation and initial management far more than technique.

The questions on this page cover the acute abdomen, trauma and burns, orthopaedics, urology, ophthalmology, ear, nose and throat, skin surgery, breast, vascular and upper gastrointestinal surgery, and perioperative care.

Where it sits in the exam

Surgery is 20% of the blueprint, about 30 of the 150 questions. With adult medicine it makes up half the exam. Many of our surgical questions begin in general practice or the emergency department rather than on a surgical ward, and some turn on the setting: a rural hospital without CT or a surgeon on site changes what the next step should be.

Where candidates go wrong

These traps recur in our question bank.

• Waiting for imaging the patient cannot afford. A normal ultrasound does not exclude testicular torsion, and a very painful acute scrotum goes to surgery first. An unstable trauma patient with free fluid on FAST needs theatre, not a CT scan before transfer. Tension pneumothorax in traumatic arrest is decompressed before any image.
• The usual order when bleeding comes first. In a primary survey, catastrophic external haemorrhage is controlled before the airway.
• The detailed scan before the first-line test. Suspected abdominal aortic aneurysm starts with ultrasound. Ureteric stones are confirmed with non-contrast CT, because ultrasound misses many of them. A raised PSA goes to multiparametric MRI before a decision on biopsy.
• Doing too much. A simple skin abscess needs drainage and usually no antibiotic. Acute pancreatitis does not need early CT, prophylactic antibiotics or parenteral nutrition as routine.
• Skin lesions. A suspected melanoma needs a complete excision biopsy with a narrow margin, rather than a partial biopsy or a wide excision first, and a flat lesion that has already changed is excised rather than monitored.
• Eyes. An alkali injury is irrigated at once and for longer than the pain suggests, because alkali burns can hurt little while damage continues.
• Sore throat in a high-risk patient. For an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person in a region where rheumatic fever is common, the general rule of withholding antibiotics does not apply.

How to revise surgery

Revise surgical presentations by urgency: what goes to theatre now, what needs same-day referral and what is managed in general practice. For each, learn the single investigation that decides the next step and the findings that override it.

Trauma and burns questions often turn on one of these Australian emergency department rules.

Cancer Council Australia's clinical guidelines cover melanoma and keratinocyte cancers, among others. Therapeutic Guidelines covers antibiotic prophylaxis and treatment. The Australian guideline for acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease sets out when a sore throat must be treated. The AMC's free book Australian Medicine in Context places common surgical conditions in their Australian setting. Surgery pairs with adult medicine, and the ten patterns that cost marks in the preparation guide cover the habits that cost marks across the exam.