General Mock 2
Candidate Instructions
Instructions for the General Station
This is your General Interview. You have 15 minutes for this station.
Examiner Instructions
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:
- Qualifications and experience
- Commitment to specialty
- Involvement in teaching/audit/QI/research
- Reflective practice
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.
Qualifications and Experience
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1 – Tell me about your career to date?
2 – What aspects of your career development are you keen to work on?
- Tell me about your career to date?
- [Examiner prompt: Pick up on anything particularly interesting that the candidate brings up in their answer and ask them to ‘Tell me more about …’]
- What aspects of your career development are you keen to work on?
- [Examiner prompt: Why are you keen to work on this? How can you achieve this while in anaesthetics training?]
- Tell me about your career to date?
This is the one stem question you will be expected to have a longer answer for (approximately 2 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 Start Points as possible.
You may answer this in a chronological or topical manner:
A) Chronological: Start with any prizes, achievements or projects completed in medical school. Then move on to activities in your Foundation jobs followed by any F3 experience. Talk about any post-graduate exams you may have already completed, taster weeks in anaesthesia, and any conferences attended. Highlight some of your 5 Star Points to stand out from the start.
B) Topical: This approach is more useful to candidates who have a longer medical career to date (eg. completed core training of a different specialty, a few years out after FY1 and FY2 training, post-grad medicine degree with research background in first undergraduate degree, completed masters or PhD). Using this structure, divide your answer into categories of achievements depending on what your strengths are. For example, you could divide it into: relevant clinical experience, teaching/ audit/ QI/ research/ publications, extracurricular activities, postgraduate exams and prizes.
Regardless of which structure you use to answer this question, it should highlight the breadth of your achievements and your Star Points.
You should also have a solid one-line sentence that introduces your ‘career to date’. For example, ‘I have had a fairly straightforward career to date’ is helpful if you have come straight through from Foundation Training. ‘I have a variety of clinical and research experience to date’ may be a more helpful introduction if you have taken time out of training and gained other competencies.
Know your CV, sell yourself and be confident in highlighting your Star Points!
2. What aspects of your career development are you keen to work on?
This question aims to elicit your awareness of what you think your CV is missing or could do with more work on.
There is no right or wrong answer and could range from more experience leading teaching/ QI/ audit/ research to more clinical aspects.
Interviewers will be looking to see that you have genuinely considered your strengths and weaknesses as represented in your CV.
A well-thought out answer should also include explaining HOW you intend to develop your skills. If it comes naturally, naming some courses or qualifications that would help you achieve these goals will demonstrate that you have already thought about this thoroughly.
Commitment to specialty
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1 – Why would you like to pursue a career in anaesthesia?
2 – What makes a good anaesthetic department?
1. Why would you like to pursue a career in anaesthesia?
[Examiner prompt: Is there any aspect of a career in anaesthesia that particularly interests you?]
2. What makes a good anaesthetic department?
[How do you contribute to your current department?]
1. Why would you like to pursue a career in anaesthesia?
Always bring this question back to YOU. Talk about first hand experiences you have had to substantiate your answers.
Demonstrate an awareness of what a career in anaesthesia entails. This is an acute specialty with large emphasis on technical skills, team-working, MDT, patient safety, and non-technical skills such as leadership and communication. The FRCA examinations are also a big feat and acknowledging this shows the interviewer you are entering this career with your eyes open!
Give examples of how you already possess some of those skills. Eg. ‘I have been told that I always communicate clearly and work well with the various clinical teams I have had the opportunity to collaborate with. In formal feedback such as MSFs, I have been told specifically that I am good at bringing teams together to achieve a common goal’
2. What makes a good anaesthetic department?
There are many ways to approach this question.
You could make a list of the top three things that you have found are essential to making a good department or classify various points into a few categories.
However you formulate your answer, be sure to bring it back to you. Eg. ‘A good department has supportive colleagues. As I have progressed in my career, I have become more mindful to be supportive of my junior colleagues and develop healthy working relationships with my peers. This has helped to foster a support network in my team, which proved especially useful over the recent COVID pandemic.’ If prompted, you should be able to give a short and specific example of this.
Involvement in Teaching/Audit/QI
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1 – Tell me about a project you have been involved in that resulted in significant change.
2 – What is the importance of audit and quality improvement in anaesthesia?
1 – Tell me about a project you have been involved in that resulted in significant change.
[Examiner prompt: Is there anything you would change if you were to undertake this project again?]
2 – What is the importance of audit and quality improvement in anaesthesia?
[Examiner prompt: Should all anaesthetists be actively involved in audit and QI?]
1 – Tell me about a project you have been involved in that resulted in significant change.
[Examiner prompt: Is there anything you would change if you were to undertake this project again?]
Your project can be anything from volunteering, teaching, audit, QI or research. It does not need to be directly related to anaesthesia.
Be sure to include details about what you did, why your role was important, what change resulted, why the change was significant, and what you learnt.
2 – What is the importance of audit and quality improvement in anaesthesia?
[Examiner prompt: Should all anaesthetists be actively involved in audit and QI?]
Broadly, audit and QI are processes by which clinicians evaluate their practice for safety and efficacy.
Audit measures a department’s performance against a standard (usually a national standard set by relevant governing bodies).
Quality Improvement sets out to improve quality in a variety of settings (patient experience, clinician experience, efficiency of processes etc.). QI methodology follows ‘PDSA’ cycles – Plan, Do, Study, Act – to continually improve the processes involved in evaluation and execution of quality improvement.
You should be familiar with the differences between audit and QI.
Talk about an example of an audit or QI project you have been involved in. Be specific about which steps you had responsibility for and where your role fitted in with the entirety of the project.
Reflective Practice
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1- What do you do to destress?
2 – What has your clinical experience of the COVID-19 pandemic been?
1 – What do you do to de-stress?
There is no right or wrong answer!
Demonstrate a level of self-awareness for identifying when you are stressed and building healthy coping mechanisms.
This is also an opportunity to tell the interviewers something about yourself that has not yet come up in the interview so far – for example: playing sport to a high level, climbing to the peak of Kilimanjaro, playing in an orchestra etc.
2. What has your clinical experience of the COVID-19 pandemic been?
A balanced answer includes pros and cons from the COVID-19 pandemic.
While many new skills were acquired and many doctors were presented with a steep learning curve, many also felt burnt-out and missed out on other types of clinical experience as clinics and services were scaled back.
A helpful structure to presenting a balanced answer is the phrase ‘on the one hand… on the other…’
Examiner Feedback
| Qualifications and Experience | Commitment to specialty | Involvement in teaching/Audit/QI | Reflective practice |
|---|---|---|---|
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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?