The general interview station at CT1 is where candidates with similar clinical ability separate. The assessors are scoring professional behaviour and communication, teamwork, and commitment to specialty, and they have fifteen minutes to find out whether you have chosen anaesthetics for reasons that will survive seven years of training. This guide covers the four published areas and how to answer within each.
Training to date
"Talk us through your training to date and what has prepared you for this post" opens many general stations. Keep it to two minutes and aim it at anaesthetics: the acute rotations, the time in theatre or intensive care, the procedures you have done, the sickest patients you have managed, and what each taught you about the specialty. Name the hardest rotation and what you learned. End on what you still need to learn, which shows insight and sets up the programme question.
Commitment to the specialty
This is the domain candidates most often answer with feelings when the assessors want evidence. The questions:
- When did you first realise you wanted to do anaesthetics?
- What have you done to demonstrate your commitment?
- What do you know about the training programme, its stages and the FRCA exams?
- Which parts of anaesthetics will you find hardest?
- Why ACCS, or why core anaesthetics, and what is the difference?
- What would you do if you were not appointed this year?
Build a short list before the interview of the things you did on purpose: a taster week in anaesthetics or intensive care, a course such as an airway or simulation course, an audit on pain, perioperative care or theatre efficiency, a presentation at a meeting, membership of the trainee association, time spent with the pre assessment clinic. For each, say what it taught you about the job. Three well told pieces of evidence beat ten listed.
Know the programme: the stages of training, the Primary and Final FRCA and when they fall, the structure of ACCS and how it leads into anaesthetics, intensive care, emergency medicine or acute medicine. Two accurate sentences are enough. Then say how you will manage the Primary alongside full time work, because the assessors know it is the hardest part of the first two years.
The honest question about difficulty deserves an honest answer. Anaesthetics has real difficulties: the exams, the solitary responsibility, the moments when things go wrong fast, the night work, the pressure of a theatre list. Name one, say why it will be hard for you, and say how you will manage it. A candidate who finds nothing hard reads as unprepared.
Teamwork and leadership
Two examples, one of each, in STARR form with your own role clear. For teamwork, say what the team needed and what you provided, and mention what a nurse, an ODP or another professional contributed. For leadership, an example at your level where you took charge: an arrest call before the registrar arrived, a ward round falling apart, a rota problem. Say what you decided, how you communicated it, and what the outcome was. Reflection on what you would do differently finishes both well.
Anaesthesia is a team specialty and the assessors listen for respect across professions. A candidate who speaks about ODPs and recovery nurses as colleagues scores; one who speaks about them as assistants does not.
The NHS and the specialty
"What challenges does the NHS face, and how do they affect anaesthetics?" rewards linking rather than listing. The specialty specific pressures right now: the workforce census showing a shortfall of anaesthetists equivalent to over a million operations a year, the waiting list and the pressure on theatre productivity, the debate about anaesthesia associates and their scope of practice, perioperative medicine and the push to see patients earlier and better before surgery, and the effect of industrial action on training. Pick three, say what you have seen on the wards, and say what a trainee can do about one of them.
Communication and professional behaviour
These are scored across the station rather than asked about directly. They are about how you answer: clearly, honestly, without jargon, listening to the question, admitting what you do not know. A candidate who stops and says "I am not sure, but I think" when they are not sure scores better than one who bluffs.
Preparing
Write a one minute answer to each question above with a specific in it. Say them aloud against a timer. Then have someone ask the follow ups: which part of the audit was yours, what did the taster week change, why anaesthetics and not intensive care. The station is fifteen minutes and the assessors will use all of them.