Unit 9: Medical, Background, and Attitude Review

The Selection Process: Preparing for the Medical Exam

 You may need to do some preparation for the medical exam. If you have some minor medical problems, get them taken care of right away. If you are underweight or overweight, start working on that now. If there are some potential difficulties for you in dealing with your medical history, make an appointment with a doctor to get advice on how to handle the problems. For instance, if you sustained a serious injury from some sports activity in the past, or if you have something like allergies, tell the doctor you are applying for a law enforcement job and ask how you should describe these things when you are giving your medical history. If the police department has very stringent vision requirements and your eyesight may not be quite good enough, you should consider getting some vision training to temporarily improve your eyesight. Consult an optometrist or ophthalmologist (eye doctor). There are some who specialize in training people to pass civil service exams; they advertise in civil service newspapers.

Obviously, preparing for the medical exam can be expensive for people with some medical problems and can be a real problem for candidates with limited resources. Still, one should make maximum use of any clinics or other health services which are available. As much as 50% of law enforcement applicants fail the medical exam, so it is worth preparing for as much as possible. Good preparation will also be helpful if you fail the exam and then appeal the results. Of the candidates who fail the medical exam, about half are later passed on appeal when they submit documents from their own doctor.