Introduction

The aims of the FRCS exam are to see if you have enough knowledge to practise as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon safely; not to test you as a paediatric orthopaedic consultant. Hence, the depth of knowledge required is not huge. Nevertheless, a substantial number of candidates fail this section.

This is partly because this section is not well covered by most exam books. Reading paediatric orthopaedic textbooks for the exam is not practical and can be confusing for the inexperienced. Most candidates, particularly those who could not have a paediatric placement, rely on a few good courses to consolidate this area of knowledge.

With this in mind, we used a different approach to cover this section in which we married actual exam questions gathered over the past few years with comprehensive and expanded answers. This keeps the theme of a viva book, provides comprehension of the topics and extra knowledge that may help high fliers to score high marks. Hence, you may find candidate answers with diagrams, X-rays and graphs; these are for your benefit rather than expected answers.

We stuck to the exam principle, where a simple question is asked concerning a clinical picture, X-ray or video clip, followed by increasingly difficult questions to explore the candidate depth and breadth of knowledge. Some of the questions are deliberately difficult and beyond average candidate level, some are easy and the majority are average.

We wish you the best of luck.