Interview Questions for Pre-Health/Medical School

5. What is the most important factor between a PA and his physician supervisor and why? 6. If you had to be a member of the healthcare team other than a PA, what would you choose? 7. Who is the most important person on the healthcare team? 8. What is the difference between a NP and a PA? 9. What is a dependent practitioner, and how do you feel about practicing as one?

Scenario Questions/ Current Issues

1. You have a patient whose English stills needs some improvement and you do not speak her language, how do you overcome the language barrier to assist her with her needs? 2. Provide an example of a time that you had to make an ethical decision. What was the situation and what did you do? 3. A person makes an appointment with their primary care physician, but when they are waiting for the doctor in the examining room, you enter and explain that you will be meeting with her today. The patient refuses to be examined by a Physician Assistant. How do you handle this situation? 4. How would you describe your position to a patient? 5. What are the most significant issues PAs currently face and will have to face in the future? 6. What do you see as the role of the Physician Assistant in the workforce or healthcare in the next 10 years? 7. How would you handle a dispute with a colleague? 8. Describe the day of a hypothetical surgical PA and that of a medical PA.

Questions to Ask Employers

The interview is the time for you to evaluate a potential employer. Be sure to ask questions that will help you establish if this position is a good fit. 1. What are or would be the expectations of me for this position? 2. What is the hospital /organization’s management style? 3. What is your nurse/patient ratio?

General Questions

1. Tell me about yourself. 2. What has been your greatest success? Greatest failure? 3. What are you top strengths? Weakness? 4. Why do you want to work for us? Why this company? 5. How would you describe your personality? 6. What item on your resume are you most proud of?

Internship/Undergraduate Questions

1. How effectively do you balance your course load at school with any jobs or extracurricular activities? 2. Describe the most challenging situation you've had to deal with and the ways you dealt with it. 3. Describe a situation where you have thought of a new or creative way of dealing with a problem. 4. Describe a time when you encountered an especially difficult project. What did you do and what was the result? 5. What do you consider to be your greatest personal or school related accomplishment? How did youachieve it? 6. Describe your most successful effort in promoting teamwork within a group and how they responded. 7. What would someone you've worked for describe as your strengths? What about areas that need improvement? 8. Describe a situation when your work or one of your ideas was criticized. How did you respond? 9. Describe a situation in which you've shown a great deal of initiative. 10. Describe a goal that you have set for yourself in the last year.

Motivation/Commitment to Medicine

1. Why do you want to become a doctor? 2. What is your choice of specialty? Why? 3. What have you done that shows initiative? What did you learn from that experience? 4. What leadership positions have you held in school? 5. When did you first think seriously about going to medical school?

Education/Experience

1. What classes did you dislike the most? What was your favorite class? Why? 2. What have you don’t to prepare yourself to be a doctor?

3. Why should we accept you over the other applications who applied for this program? 4. What kind of direct patient care experiences do you have? 5. Be prepared to discuss weaknesses in your academic transcripts and MCAT scores. 6. Have you had any practical experiences in medicine? Shadowed physicians? 7. If you could do anything different in your education, what would you do?

Knowledge of Program

1. What do your know about our school? 2. Are you a good fit for our program? Explain. OR 3. Are you a strong candidate for our program? Why?

Goals/Plans/Realistic Outlook

1. How will you deal with the stress of school and this profession? 2. How do you plan to pay for medical school and living expenses? 3. Where do you plan to practice after you graduate? 4. What do you think you will struggle with during medical school? 5. Where would you like to practice? Rural or inner city areas? 6. What will you do if you are not accepted into medical school? 7. Why would you be a good doctor? 8. What do you feel are the most important qualities in being a good doctor?

Exposure to Medicine/Current Events

1. What politicians are currently impacting medicine? Do you agree with the decisions they are making? 2. Given a specific hypothetical medical scenario: How would you treat the patient? 3. What are some current controversial areas in medicine? Select one then give your opinion on it and defend that opinion. 4. What is your opinion of National Health Insurance? 5. Do you see any negatives in the (medical) profession? 6. What do you think about (patient rights, medical costs, HMO's, euthanasia, Phenphen, confidentiality, etc)? 7. Discuss one issue that you feel is of primary concern in health care. 8. Identify three political issues that you feel are of great importance in the health care field. 9. What sorts of ethical problems can you see coming up in the medical profession? 10. Are any of your relatives physicians (dentists, etc)? If so, where did they go to school? 11. Why is medicine such an important field? 12. In your view, what is the most pressing problem facing medicine today? 13. Expect questions concerning what you think about ethics and healthcare (i.e., abortion, cloning, euthanasia, etc.) 14. Be prepared to discuss managed healthcare and changes in the US healthcare system. 15. How would you describe the relationship between science, medicine, and art?

Behavior-Based

1. Say you were a doctor and your patient is terminal. The patient looks at you with hope and asks if he will make it. What do you tell him? 2. How might you calm a nervous patient? 3. What if you had a patient that did not pay? 4. What would you do if a doctor gave you orders that you know will harm the patient? 5. Pretend that you're the doctor. You see a patient who gives you some grief and complains. At the end of treatment he asks you if he was a good patient. What do you say? 6. Your supervising physician comes into work drunk. How would you handle the situation? 7. Imagine you are a physician. You are working with a patient who is refusing a treatment that you believe is necessary. What would you do? 8. Imagine you are a physician. How would you handle the following situation: __________ 9. Please give me an example of how you would handle a stressful situation? 10. How would you deal with a patient who was treating you badly (assume other patients in the office can overhear)?