Perito Médico Federal (INSS / MPS) common mistakes
Perito Médico Federal (INSS / MPS) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Classifying a segurado as incapaz based only on the CID/laudo diagnóstico, without describing the functional repercussion on the specific activity and without dating the início da incapacidade (DII), which leads to wrong benefit type and wrong start date.
Medical training conditions candidates to reason from diagnosis to disease severity, while previdenciário reasoning runs from function to incapacity; candidates also conflate DII with data do requerimento or data da perícia.
What to do instead
For every case, write a short functional paragraph: what the segurado can no longer do, with what effort, frequency and duration, and whether the limitation is temporary or permanent and total or partial. Fix DII explicitly and justify it with clinical or documental evidence, then check which benefit (auxílio-doença, aposentadoria por incapacidade permanente, auxílio-acidente) matches the combination of DII, duration and remaining capacity.
Treating nexo causal, nexo técnico epidemiológico (NTEP) and concausa as interchangeable, and granting estabilidade provisória or acidente-benefit without checking whether the disease is in the list of occupational diseases or whether the work exposure actually caused or aggravated the condition.
NTEP is a legal presumption that shifts the burden of proof, not a medical conclusion; candidates mix the medical causal judgment with the legal presumption and skip the analysis of concausa and of pre-existing conditions.
What to do instead
Separate the reasoning into three steps: (1) clinical diagnosis and date of onset; (2) exposure history with function, agent, time and intensity; (3) legal framing: is it an occupational disease by list, by NTEP presumption, or by individual causal proof? State whether the work was causa, concausa or irrelevant, and remember that pre-existing disease aggravated by work still counts as acidente do trabalho.
Confusing carência, qualidade de segurado and período de graça, applying a 12-month carência to benefits that do not require it or losing sight of the manutenção da qualidade de segurado after loss of employment.
The three concepts are all time-based and appear together in benefit requirements, so candidates collapse them into one; the extensions of período de graça (desemprego, mais de 120 contribuições) are easily forgotten under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Build a three-column table for each benefit: carência (number of contributions or none), qualidade de segurado (required or not) and período de graça (base 12 months plus extensions). Memorize the benefits without carência (auxílio-acidente, salário-família, pensão por morte, auxílio-reclusão, aposentadoria por incapacidade permanente quando decorrente de acidente) and rehearse the extension rules with concrete examples.
Answering Direito Administrativo questions on servidor público by intuition about 'estabilidade' and 'estágio probatório' without distinguishing cargo efetivo, cargo em comissão and função de confiança, and without applying the correct constitutional article to each situation.
The rules are spread across the Constitution, the Lei 8.112/1990 and the specific career statutes; candidates study the general principles and skip the concrete hypotheses (perda do cargo, demissão, avaliação especial de desempenho, acumulação de cargos).
What to do instead
Create a decision tree: type of vínculo, then the applicable rule for provimento, vacância, estabilidade after three years, and perda do cargo. For each hypothesis, cite the legal basis and the required procedure (processo administrativo disciplinar, sindicância, avaliação de desempenho), and train with short hypotheticals where the vínculo type changes the answer.
Reading a Língua Portuguesa item as a search for a familiar word instead of testing the actual relation asserted (causa, conclusão, oposição, finalidade), and accepting paraphrases that change the scope of a quantifier or the direction of a relation.
Candidates rely on memory of the text's topic and on superficial lexical matching, and they underestimate how examiners alter one connector, one pronoun or one modal verb to invert the meaning.
What to do instead
For each item, identify the exact assertion being tested, go back to the passage, and mark the connector or quantifier involved. Rewrite the item as a formal implication and check whether the passage entails it. Treat words like 'somente', 'sempre', 'pode', 'deve' and 'todos' as red flags requiring explicit textual support.
Solving Raciocínio Lógico items by verbal re-reading instead of translating the statements into symbols, and then negating a conditional incorrectly (treating 'se P então Q' as equivalent to 'se Q então P' or negating it as 'se P então não Q').
The statements look like ordinary prose, so candidates skip formalization; the contrapositive, the negation of quantified statements and the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions are the most common gaps.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed routine: define atomic propositions, formalize with symbols, then apply the equivalence tables (contrapositive, De Morgan, negation of 'todo' as 'algum não'). Practice ten negation and equivalence exercises per session, and always test the conclusion with a counterexample before choosing an answer.
Diagnosing psychiatric incapacity from the label alone (e.g., 'depressão' or 'transtorno de ansiedade') without assessing severity, response to treatment, insight, risk and functional impact, and without considering that many psychiatric conditions are intermittent and compatible with some work.
Psychiatric diagnoses are frequent and familiar, which encourages a categorical judgment; candidates also ignore the difference between incapacidade total temporária, incapacidade parcial e capacidade residual compatível com readaptação.
What to do instead
Structure the assessment around five axes: diagnosis and severity, current treatment and adherence, functional impact on the actual job, prognosis and risk (including suicide risk), and possibility of reabilitação profissional. Justify the conclusion by the functional impact, not by the CID, and state explicitly why the condition is or is not compatible with the job's demands.
Concluding on ortopedia cases without correlating mechanism of trauma, imaging and physical examination, and without distinguishing incapacidade para a atividade habitual from incapacidade para toda e qualquer atividade, especially in cases of fratura consolidada com sequela.
The imaging finding is concrete and attracts attention, while the functional examination and the occupational demand are abstract; candidates also forget that a sequela can generate auxílio-acidente when it reduces capacity without eliminating it.
What to do instead
For each case, describe the mechanism, the exam findings (range of motion, strength, stability, pain) and the imaging, then link them to the demands of the actual job. Decide explicitly between incapacidade total, incapacidade parcial com redução de capacidade (auxílio-acidente) and capacidade plena, and justify the choice with the functional findings.
Answering Medicina Legal and Ética Médica items by personal moral judgment or by the 'most protective' option, instead of applying sigilo médico, consentimento informado, atestado e relatório médico, and the specific duties of the perito (imparcialidade, assistente técnico, impedimentos).
Ethical norms often require disclosure or refusal that feels counterintuitive; candidates also confuse the perito's role with that of the médico assistente and forget the rules on impedimento and suspeição.
What to do instead
Memorize the core duties as short rules with their legal basis: sigilo and its legal exceptions, consentimento informado, content and limits of atestado and relatório, impedimentos and suspeição of the perito, and the difference between perito and assistente técnico. For each item, ask which role the physician occupies before applying the rule.
Losing time on Noções de Informática and on the mechanics of the exam (marking, time per item, reading order), leaving the easy items unanswered or answered in a rush at the end.
Candidates allocate study time proportional to perceived difficulty and prestige, treating informática and exam technique as trivial; the result is avoidable errors in a block where accuracy is high and cheap.
What to do instead
Reserve a fixed weekly block for informática (planilhas, segurança, redes, backup) and practice with the actual tools. In the exam, adopt a two-pass strategy: answer the items you can resolve quickly, mark the rest, and return with a time budget per block; simulate full exams under timed conditions to calibrate the pace.