RAF OASC Selection Medical

Hi there,
I'm in my final stages of the recruitment process for the RAF. Im looking to go in as an ATC Officer
My next step is to attend OASC, I was and am a little apprehensive regarding the medical. Is it an intrusive one ?
I.e. I know pilots have blood tests but do people going for ATC have to have blood tests too and different things.

I was wondering if you could help ?

You will not have your bloods taken nor will you have to do the cough and drop like Drewski said. I don't even believe you'll have to have an ECG as ATC. Only Aircrew branches such as Pilot and WSOP will have bloods taken. ABM's are classed as a flying branch so you will have the ECG but not the bloods. Again, each branch has a different level of medical fitness needed. Eye sight requirements are highest for Pilots than they are for WSOP's which are higher than the requirement for ABM's and so on.

To conclude, as ATC you will probably not even have to provide the urine sample, it will be pretty straight forward for you and will probably involve checking all 12 reflexes, looking at your joins, weight and general health such as blood pressure and peak flow. Also like AlphaTango said, you can pretty much guarantee the hearing test as your role revolves primarily around receiving and transmitting communication.

They stopped the cough drop test?! That's a rite of passage!

Well I can only deduce that they have. When I first went through OASC in 2009 they did it. The second time going through OASC (December 2015) they didn't do it to me or any of the other candidates as I was expecting it. Don't ask me why it's been stopped though.

Perhaps it's done at a later stage now? As much as it's a potentially awkward test, it's an important one and I don't think they have other ways of testing the same thing.

Not quite sure what stage they would do it. I passed OASC and did my FAM visit and start IOT next week. So I didn't have it done through the application process. Maybe they do have another way to test it, it's not really something I can ask any of my boarding officers either haha.

During the first couple of weeks you have some admin stuff, among them is a trip to the med centre for additional tests / checks. From memory that was week 1/2.

Can confirm there was no cough test on IOT.

They will take bloods from everyone during the first week though.

So I was intimately fondled for nothing?! This is an outrage!

The blood test remains though, that I remember. I then had to get some dental work because my teeth were (and still are) utterly shocking.
And a group of us who hadn't had certain inoculations because of where we were from were singled out too. Quite an odd afternoon (and it's funny what sticks in the memory nearly 7 years later).

Sigh, I thought after my capital medical and my extensive 4 hours aircrew medical at OASC that I was pretty much the pinnacle of health. Turns out they do even more medicals within the first week? Here I was thinking that getting pulled and prodded was over for a while.