The resident medical officer interview is short and its pattern is well documented: about twenty minutes, a panel of three or four, four to six questions answered briefly, and a clinical scenario in two parts about a sick patient. The same interview is used for senior RMO and unaccredited registrar posts with the scenarios pitched higher, and for local and overseas graduates alike. This guide covers the questions hospitals report using and what the panel scores.
The format
A director of training or workforce lead, a consultant, often a nurse manager. Twenty minutes. The reported pattern: an opening question on your experience or interest in the role, questions on past examples of conflict and errors, strengths and weaknesses, and a clinical scenario in two parts: the nurse's call, then what you find. Some hospitals run it as virtual rooms with one question and a time limit in each.
The opening question
Tell us about your experience and how it makes you suitable for this role. Two minutes, newest first, the acute experience and the procedures that match the job, and why this role now. The panel has your CV; they want the story.
Then usually: what are your long term career goals, and why this hospital? A credible path and something specific about the hospital and its community.
Strengths and weaknesses
What strengths do you bring to this role, and what is one weakness you are working on? A strength with an example that shows it. A real weakness with the step you are taking. Avoid the weakness that is a strength in disguise.
What qualities should a doctor at this level have? Which do you have and which do you lack? Name them: safe, organised, communicates well, asks for help early, works with nurses, keeps learning, looks after themselves. Say which you can evidence and which you are building.
The behavioural questions
Describe a situation where there was conflict between you and another member of the team. Describe a situation where you displayed leadership. Describe a situation where you displayed teamwork. Describe a situation where you displayed effective communication. A nurse complains that an intern is not attending calls and not doing their duties properly; what do you do?
STAR form every time: the situation, your task, what you did, the result, with a line of reflection. Your own actions clear. The nurses and allied health staff named by role. For the intern who is not answering pages, patient safety first, then find the intern and find out why, then help, then the supervisor if it continues.
The error questions
Describe an error you made and what you did to fix it. Describe a situation where your consultant noticed you had made a mistake; how did you react? Own it, say what you did at the time including telling the patient and your senior and reporting it, and what changed. Panels score the absence of defensiveness.
The clinical scenario
A nurse calls you about a patient two days after surgery who now has chest pain and is short of breath. Then: on arrival they are tachycardic and hypoxic. Go and see the patient, ask for the observations on the way, ABCDE, oxygen, access, ECG, bloods and a gas, chest imaging, treat what you find, and call the registrar early with ISBAR. Say what you would start before help arrives and what would make you call a rapid response.
The variations: the collapse in emergency, the clinical review call, the post operative patient who has not passed urine, the nurse who insists on a medication you do not know, the wrong patient given antibiotics, several wards paging at once. Same structure: see the patient, assess systematically, treat, escalate early, know your scope, and for the error, open disclosure and the incident report.
The system and values questions
What do you know about this hospital and its community? What does cultural safety mean to you? What are the hospital's values? What is clinical governance? Learn the hospital, define cultural safety through actions, know the values accurately.
What the panel is listening for
Going to see the patient and escalating early. STAR answers with your own actions and an outcome. Honesty about errors. Respect for nurses. A plan for training. And brevity: with six questions in twenty minutes, answers of ninety seconds to two minutes leave room for the panel to ask everything.
Preparing
One minute answers to each question above with a specific in each. The clinical scenario with its second part and the ISBAR. The hospital's values and community. Then practise aloud with someone who probes once and keeps time. A session a day for a week is usually enough.