Preparing for an interview. Part III

Below, we have included a short list of possible questions so you can start thinking about how you would answer them. You can sit down and try to come up with an answer for each and then practise speaking with a friend or colleague so you sound natural when you answer something similar.

General questions

������ Tell us about yourself

������ Talk/Walk us through your CV/Application form

������ Speak to us about your background

������ What is exceptional about you?

������ What part of your CV are you most proud of?

Personal Qualities

������ Why did you go into Medicine?

������ What is your career ambition?

������ What would you change if you could start your career again?

������ Where exactly do you see yourself in 6-7 years?

������ Why do you want to do this speciality in particular?

������ What do you like about this speciality?

Research and Audit

������ Tell us about your research experience.

������ How much of your research is your own design and how much was designed by your supervisor?

������ How do you organise your research projects?

������ Why is research important?

������ When doing research, what is the one most important thing to get right?

Teaching others and keeping yourself up to date

������ Tell us about your teaching experience.

������ What methods of teaching do you prefer? Why?

������ How would you convince a junior colleague of the importance of teaching?

������ Give me an example of a situation where you recognised that a member of your team needed more training.

������ What is Problem Based Learning? What are the pros and cons?

Ethical Problem

������ How would you deal with a situation where you suspected that your consultant had a drink problem?

������ How would you react if one of your junior colleagues came to

work drunk on the ward fi rst thing in the morning? What about if it was your consultant?

������ A patient mentions to you that on various occasions they have

smelt alcohol on another doctor’s breath during clinic in the past few weeks. What do you do? with it? How would you approach the consultant?

������ How would you react if your consultant did not provide adequate

training and adopted a condescending attitude towards

you due to your apparent lack of knowledge?

Clinical Governance and other Issues

������ What impact does Clinical Governance have on your daily

work?

������ Do you think Clinical Governance is useful or is it just more

bureaucracy?

������ Do you think there are any problems with the way Clinical

Governance is implemented?

������ Who is responsible for Clinical Governance at your hospital?