DHA Allied Health Exam common mistakes
DHA Allied Health Exam · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Choosing the option that describes what is best practice in an ideal setting rather than the action that is immediately required in the scenario, such as selecting 'document the incident' when the question asks what to do first during an active safety event.
Candidates read the scenario as a knowledge question about policy content instead of a sequencing question, so they pick the most thorough or most documented action rather than the first required step.
What to do instead
Before answering, underline the stem's cue word (first, immediately, next, priority) and eliminate any option that occurs after the immediate patient-protection step; rank remaining options by urgency to the patient.
Missing the hand-hygiene moment being tested, for example selecting 'wash hands before donning gloves' when the scenario is glove removal, or choosing alcohol rub when hands are visibly soiled with blood.
Candidates memorise the five moments as a list but do not map the scenario to a specific moment, and they default to alcohol rub because it is the most frequently correct answer.
What to do instead
For each hygiene item, identify which of the five moments the scenario describes and check the visible-soiling/spore-forming exception, which mandates soap and water over alcohol rub.
Confusing standard precautions with transmission-based precautions, such as recommending a respirator for a patient on contact precautions or adding gown-and-glove for a condition requiring only standard precautions.
Candidates conflate the precaution tiers and assume more PPE is always safer, so they over-select isolation measures or miss that standard precautions apply to every patient.
What to do instead
Build a two-column recall table: standard precautions (all patients, all body fluids) versus transmission-based (airborne, droplet, contact) with one trigger example each, and apply the tier named in the stem only.
Answering ethics items with a personal moral preference rather than the regulatory or professional obligation, such as agreeing to a family request to withhold information from a competent adult patient.
Candidates reason from intuition or cultural habit instead of the consent, confidentiality, and capacity principles that govern the profession, and they over-weight family wishes.
What to do instead
Apply a fixed order: patient autonomy and capacity first, then confidentiality limits (harm to self or others, legal reporting), then institutional policy; treat family requests as secondary to a competent patient's wishes.
Failing scope-of-practice items by choosing the clinically helpful action that exceeds the allied health role, such as adjusting a medication dose or interpreting a diagnostic image beyond the discipline's authority.
Candidates focus on whether the action would help the patient and ignore who is authorised to perform it, and they are unsure where their own discipline's boundary sits.
What to do instead
For scope questions, ask 'is this action within my licensed role, and if not, who is the correct referrer?' and prefer escalate/report/refer options over perform-it-yourself options when the task crosses a boundary.
Skipping or misordering the pre-procedure safety checks in technical scenarios, such as beginning a procedure before confirming patient identity, consent, and equipment function.
Candidates treat technical questions as pure skill recall and overlook that the exam embeds safety checks inside procedural stems.
What to do instead
Rehearse a fixed pre-procedure checklist (identity, consent, indication, equipment/sterility, positioning, monitoring) and scan every technical stem for which check is missing or out of order.
Selecting the intervention that treats the symptom rather than the underlying physiological problem, for example choosing to reposition a patient with new unilateral leg swelling and pain instead of recognising a possible clot and escalating.
Candidates pattern-match the visible complaint to a comfort measure and do not connect the presentation to the applied science mechanism being tested.
What to do instead
For each clinical scenario, state the likely pathophysiology in one sentence before reading options, then choose the option that addresses that mechanism or escalates it.
Confusing related anatomical or physiological terms under time pressure, such as mixing afferent with efferent, proximal with distal, or arterial with venous pressure relationships.
Candidates recognise the terms as familiar and answer on recognition rather than on precise definition, and paired opposites are easily reversed.
What to do instead
Maintain a paired-opposites list and, for each pair, write a one-line functional definition plus one clinical example; review it immediately before the exam rather than re-reading full chapters.
Writing documentation or handover answers that are vague or judgemental, such as 'patient was fine' or 'difficult patient', instead of objective, measurable, and time-stamped observations.
Candidates answer from conversational habit rather than documentation standards, and they do not distinguish subjective impression from objective data.
What to do instead
Apply the objective-standard test to every documentation option: does it state what was observed or done, when, and by whom, without opinion or blame? Eliminate options containing labels or unquantified adjectives.
Choosing to handle an interprofessional conflict or concern alone, such as silently correcting a colleague's error or bypassing the team, instead of using structured escalation and closed-loop communication.
Candidates prioritise avoiding confrontation and underestimate that the exam rewards explicit, respectful escalation through the chain of responsibility.
What to do instead
Prefer options that use structured tools (identify self and concern, state the safety issue, request a check-back, escalate up the chain if unresolved) over options that avoid, conceal, or unilaterally fix the problem.