The questions asked are "Have you ever had or been told you had..." types of questions. Not up to you to decide "what's safe not to mention" or not. Answer them truthfully. Another red flag - lying, either flagrantly or by omission. If I had a dime for every time I cautioned someone regarding it being an offence under the National Defence Act to make a false statement to gain enrollment (literally every person I did a Pt 1 or 2 enrollment medical on), I wouldn't need to work right now.
CBH - unless you work in Recruiting as a Med Tech, PA or MO, don't counsel people what they should or shouldn't say on their medical, beyond being truthful and to be prepared to have to provide detailed answers from your GP/specialist(s) regarding past or current conditions. To use you example, that broken arm may have had to have hardware in it, might be near a joint that could cause early arthritis to set in, etc...and if it were one of several, that's another rabbit hole that needs to be explored - they a klutz as a kid, had the crap beat out of them continually, so now they have psych issues, been in a multi-trauma episode which leads to "Oh by the way, I had my spleen taken out, was in a body cast for however long..." sort of stuff, all of which I've seen and it all started with a negative or minimized answer to something but "what lead to that scar you have there?" sort of scenario.
You are 100% right, I apologize.
I did work in Recruiting for about 2 years, but this was between 2008 and 2010.
Our standard response to questions such as these is usually "Contact your nearest recruiting center, as they will be able to guide you best." It's good advice & a safe answer, I should have to thought my response through more.
The answers I provided were meant to be fairly generic, as the way I had read the question was "red flags on the application, the medical, or the interview."
My mindset was pretty casual at the time of posting, and when he mentioned the medical, my mind automatically went to just the general/common stuff I used to deal with in terms of the files I was managing. (Asthma, anxiety, broke their ankle playing soccer a few years back, etc etc.)
But now that I've read your post, you are 100% right. There's a lot more depth to some of those questions than I had realized, and your example opened my eyes to some questions & possibilities I hadn't thought of. Humbly noted & fixed**
So allow me to re-address the poster's initial question:
- MedicineMan is right, I was outside my lane on the medical. I was attempting to address your question with good intentions, but may have inadvertently given you some bad advice. **Also, I would never encourage anybody to lie on their application. (I've seen files held up on medical grounds because applicants disclosed minor things which they in turn regretted disclosing. I was, again, thinking more along those kinds of things.)
- The 'common' red flags that I experienced during my time as a recruiter was a criminal record, criminal matters before the courts, serious credit issues.
- Contacting your local recruiting center is
ALWAYS the best source of up to date information.