General Mock 6 – updated for 2024
Candidate Instructions
This is your General Interview, which will follow straight on from your Clinical Interview.
Examiner Instructions
This mock contains more questions than you will be able to go through in a 15-minute interview. This is reflective of the real interview where interviewers are given an option of a few questions they can ask the candidates in the 15-minute time frame.
You should choose a range of questions over the course of the 15 minutes that will enable you to assess the candidate on the following four domains:
- Professional behaviour and communication
- Commitment to specialty
- Reflective practice
- Global rating
It is your duty to keep track of time so that you are able to ask a reasonable spread of questions that allow the candidate the opportunity to score points in all four domains. Aim to spend about 3.5 minutes on each of the four assessed domains.
You can only ask the questions verbatim, as they are written. You may repeat the question if the candidate seeks clarification.
Professional Behaviour & Communication
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Click the tab above to reveal questions.
- How do your qualifications make you suitable for a career in anaesthesia?
- Can you talk me through (the rest of) your CV?
- What challenges have you faced while carrying out an audit or QI project?
- What do you think constitutes good communication?
- How do your qualifications make you suitable for a career in anaesthesia
Prompt: Are there any courses or training days that you have been on that you think may contribute to you becoming a better anaesthetist?
- Can you talk me through (the rest of) your CV?
Prompt: Which of these achievements are you most proud of and why?
- What challenges have you faced while carrying out an audit or QI project?
Prompt: How did you identify those challenges and overcome them?
4. What do you think constitutes good communication?
Prompt: Can you give me an example of a time when you demonstrated good communication skills?
Answer Frameworks
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How do your qualifications make you suitable for a career in anaesthesia?
– Be aware of the person specification: https://specialtytraining.hee.nhs.uk/
– There are two sets of ‘qualifications’ that you should consider in your answer.
– The first is to demonstrate that you have met the ‘Essential Criteria’ on the person specification – this is obvious as you would not be offered an interview if you did not meet this, but you should mention it briefly. These are that you have an MBBS or equivalent qualification, have (or are eligible for) full GMC registration and are completing foundation training (or equivalent).
– The second is to talk them through your achievements outside of the Essential Criteria. These include any additional degrees, diplomas, certificates, research/ publications or clinical experience you have. Mention any Advance Life Support (ALS), Advance Trauma Life Support (ATLS) and Paediatric Advance Life Support (PALS) you may have completed. Mention if you have attended any teaching courses or QI/Audit workshops your trust has organised.
– Conclude by summarising how the collection of qualifications you have will add to you becoming a well-rounded anaesthetist with clinical and non-clinical skills to continue developing throughout training. Acknowledge that the role of the anaesthetist is varied and that all your qualifications to date only add value to the type of trainee you will be.
Can you talk me through (the rest of) your CV?
– This question is very similar to other opening questions that ask you to detail your career to date but (as demonstrated here) may follow an initial question that already asked you to talk about your qualifications. In this case, you should be able to filter your answer to talk about all the other achievements you were yet to highlight in your first answer. This includes any non-clinical or personal achievements.
– An example of a good opening line that signposts your answer: ‘Other achievements that I would like to highlight from the rest of my CV include…’
– If this question is asked as the opening question, you will be expected to have a longer answer for this question (approximately 3-4 minutes, uninterrupted without prompts). You have complete control to steer the interviewers in any direction you wish, so be sure to have a robust answer for this question to highlight as many of your 5 CV Highlights as possible. (See ‘An Approach to the General Interview’)
– Know your CV, sell yourself and be confident in highlighting your Star Points!
What challenges have you faced while carrying out an audit or QI project?
– You should aim to spend no more than 30 seconds describing your audit or QI project. Spend the rest of your answer (up to 2 minutes) describing what challenges you faced and how you responded to overcome them. Think about the team you may have worked with, interactional difficulties, organisational barriers, encouraging buy-in from relevant stakeholders, juggling multiple commitments while running your project, collecting accurate data, or learning how to carry out a PDSA cycle for your QI project for the first time.
– Whatever the challenge, you should be able to describe how you dealt with it. Demonstrate proactive problem-solving and talk about how this experience may have taught you to plan future projects differently.
– Reflect on how you felt while facing these challenges and how anything you learnt from this project is translatable into your day to day clinical practice.
What do you think constitutes good communication?
– Remember that the interviewers are not interested in the three or four points that you highlight as constituting good communication. They are much more interested in your insights into why you have chosen those points and your justifications for them. You should also tie your answer in with an example of when you have demonstrated good communication.
– Things to consider in your answer: communication can be verbal, written, or non-verbal. Think about clear speech or written instructions, appropriate use of language and tone of voice, closed-loop communication, active listening, having a non-confrontational demeanour, and civility – the list can be as long as you want it to be!
– What is important is your ability to spend most of the answer demonstrating how you are a good communicator. Give them an example of when you communicated well with a patient or colleague and reflect on why you think it went well.
Commitment to Specialty
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What do you think is the role of an anaesthetist as an educator?
What do you think is the worst aspect about being an anaesthetist?
- What do you think is the role of an anaesthetist as an educator?
Prompt: What involvement have you had with teaching so far?
What do you think is the worst aspect about being an anaesthetist?
Prompt: How did you identify those challenges and overcome them?
Answer Frameworks
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What do you think is the role of an anaesthetist as an educator?
– Anaesthetics training is unique compared to other specialties in that your training consists mostly of one-to-one interactions with anaesthetic consultants. As such, all anaesthetists will be engaged in education during their career.
– Beyond this day-to-day teaching, anaesthetists also interact with nearly every specialty in the hospital and are therefore best-placed to education the multidisciplinary team across a whole trust, and roll out new guidelines or projects that involve multiple specialties.
– Remember that this is an interview about YOU. Spend less than 30 seconds appreciating the role of anaesthetists as educators, and the rest of your answer talking about any experience you have had in teaching. Expound on why you carried out teaching, how you did it and what you learnt from your teaching experience. If you have attended any teaching courses, you should mention those here.
– Examples of teaching experiences you may want to expand on include: bedside teaching for medical students, ad-hoc teaching on ward rounds, teaching allied health professionals you have worked with, formal teaching, tutoring, presentations to larger groups, or mentoring FY1 colleagues.
What do you think is the worst aspect about being an anaesthetist?
– Everyone finds a different aspect about anaesthesia challenging. Your goal should be to think about one, talk about why you might find it challenging (and any similar experiences you have had that suggest to you this is true), and how you intend to deal with this challenge.
– Common things about anaesthesia that junior trainees find challenging include: early starts and late finishes (anaesthetic days are long!), initial steep learning curve as a novice anaesthetist where you are closely supervise for every minute task (people coming in from previously senior posts in other specialties tend to struggle with this more), frequency of nights and on-calls, acuity of specialty work, working in different teams with new members on a nearly daily basis, working with a vast range of patient types (neonatal to elderly), or frequent rotations between different trusts or hospitals. You would be demonstrating good awareness of the specialty if you mention the FRCA as a significant career hurdle – this is a beast every anaesthetist has to face at some point!
Reflective Practice
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What resources or systems would you turn to if you felt overwhelmed?
How can you identify and support a colleague who is struggling at work?
- What resources or systems would you turn to if you felt overwhelmed?
Prompt: Can you tell me about a time when you have turned to these resources or systems?
- How can you identify and support a colleague who is struggling at work?
Prompt: How do you think training can be improved to support for junior doctors?
Answer Frameworks
Click each tab to reveal the answer frameworks.
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What resources or systems would you turn to if you felt overwhelmed?
– There is no right way to deal with feeling overwhelmed! This question is designed to allow you to show the interviewers a bit more about who you are.
– What differentiates a good answer from an average answer is your ability to reflect on why your method of de-stressing works for you, how you developed it, whether you are able to recognise when you are reaching your critical threshold for being overwhelmed, if you are able to draw healthy boundaries to preserve your wellbeing while not compromising work, and if you have healthy ways of processing stress or conflict.
– Do not speak in general terms! You should be able to talk about an example where you used or turned to one of your resources in a particular time when you felt overwhelmed.
How can you identify and support a colleague who is struggling at work?
– Identifying a colleague who is struggling at work may not be as easy as it sounds! Acknowledge that in a system where junior doctors rotate every 4 – 6 months with varying on-call rotas, it is easy to miss the struggling colleague.
– It is also worth reflecting on how most colleagues (or yourself personally) would probably be able to internalise a degree of their struggling such that it would be difficult to identify.
– Some tell-tale signs of a struggling colleague may include a change in their mood, decline in their work, poor timekeeping, tiredness, poor engagement in educational activities, appearing unmotivated etc.
– The point of this question is not to test if you know all the signs of a struggling colleague, but to reflect on the shared experiences and struggles of a junior doctor, how this impacts everyone’s wellbeing, and how you may be a positive impact on those you work with by supporting them.
– Talk about a time when you supported a colleague. Most of us have supported colleagues who are having a bad day. Your example does not need to be grand, but should consider how you identified that they needed support, how you supported them in a way that they found helpful and things you might do day-to-day to create an environment that is supportive for all colleagues.
Examiner Feedback
| Professional Behaviour & Comms | Commitment to Specialty | Reflective practice | Global rating |
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Scoring system:
1 = unsatisfactory
2 = weak
3 = typical
4 = very good
5 = outstanding
See a guide to the scoring matrix section of this question bank.
Feedback Prompts
1. What domains did the candidate give very good or outstanding answers for?
2. What domains do you think the candidate could work on?
3. Please provide feedback on the candidate’s style of interview. Consider their eye contact, body language, pace and clarity of speech. Do they have any tics, habits, or quirks that do not come across well in their interview?
Don’t be afraid to give honest feedback!
It can be tempting to give generic positive feedback to your partner, e.g. ‘that was really good, I wouldn’t change anything’ . Both of you will benefit from constructive criticism. Think of any way your partner may be able to improve. Reciprocal constructive feedback is the key.