Selection into anaesthesia training in Australia is run by employers and networks under ANZCA's guidelines, and the guidelines shape the questions: every one must map to the ANZCA roles in practice and the advertised selection criteria, personal questions are prohibited, and every candidate gets the same questions. Several networks deliver them as a four minute uninterrupted monologue with a silent panel. This guide covers the questions that recur and how the format changes the answer.
The format
A panel of two or three anaesthetists. In many networks, each question is read once and you answer for four minutes while the panel stays silent, then the next question. Other networks run a structured panel with probing. Either way the questions map to the roles in practice: medical expert, communicator, collaborator, leader and manager, health advocate, scholar and professional. The handbook requires interviews to be based on the selection criteria, and personal questions about family, relationships or plans outside work are not allowed.
Motivation and the programme
- Why do you want to train in anaesthesia, and why with this network?
- Tell us about your experience to date and how it has prepared you for anaesthetic training.
- What qualities does a good anaesthetic trainee need, and how do you demonstrate them?
- What do you know about the ANZCA training programme, its stages and its examinations?
- Anaesthetic training includes rural and regional rotations. What would you bring to a rural site, and what would you get from it?
- What do you think you will find hardest about anaesthesia?
- What would you do if you were not successful this year?
Panels score evidence: the anaesthetic and intensive care terms, the cases, the airway course, the audit on theatre or pain, the primary exam sat early. Know the programme in two accurate sentences: the stages, the primary and final examinations, the volume of practice requirements, the rural and subspecialty rotations. Name an honest difficulty: the primary exam alongside full time work, the solitary responsibility, the moments when things go wrong fast.
The clinical scenarios
At junior registrar level, often with two minutes of reading time:
- A nurse calls from recovery about a patient who is drowsy with a respiratory rate of six after a hip replacement.
- A patient in the emergency department with severe asthma is tiring and the consultant is twenty minutes away.
- A patient two days after a laparotomy is hypotensive, tachycardic and oliguric.
- Anaphylaxis at induction while you are assisting.
- A nurse tells you a patient has received ten times the intended opioid dose, including what you say to the patient.
- A patient listed for emergency surgery refuses blood products.
- Two deteriorating patients, you alone, the consultant in another theatre.
- A patient with a known difficult airway listed for an emergency case overnight.
Structure the answer: systematic assessment, the immediate treatment, early escalation with ISBAR even when the consultant is distant, and what you would do while waiting. The panel wants a junior registrar who treats and calls, not one who waits for permission.
Professionalism and the roles in practice
- Your supervising consultant makes a clinical decision you believe is unsafe. How do you handle it in the moment and afterwards?
- How would you provide culturally safe anaesthetic care to an Aboriginal patient who is frightened of hospital?
- A colleague tells you they have been diverting opioids. What do you do?
- How do fatigue and wellbeing affect safety in anaesthesia, and what does the college expect of you?
- What is the role of the ANZCA professional documents in day to day practice?
Patient safety first, then a respectful approach, then the channels: the supervisor of training, the head of department, mandatory notification where it applies. For wellbeing, name the college's expectations and your own strategies.
Teamwork, errors and reflection
A multidisciplinary teamwork example, a conflict with a senior, an error you made and what changed, a case that changed your practice, and how you look after yourself through training. STAR form with your own actions clear.
Answering in a monologue
Four minutes with no probing changes the answer. Signpost the structure in your first sentence, cover every part of the question, give one specific example, and close with a summary before the timer ends. Running short and losing the thread are the common failures.
Preparing
Write one STAR example per role in practice, prepare the eight clinical scenarios with ISBAR, and practise every answer aloud against a four minute clock. Find out whether your network runs the monologue or a panel, and practise in that format.