NHS Doctor Interview Questions
NHS medical interviews are more predictable than they feel. Consultant Advisory Appointments Committees, national specialty training recruitment and trust interviews for locally employed doctors each have a published or well documented format, a scoring scheme and a set of questions that recur year after year. This hub collects them by career stage, ranked by how often candidates report being asked, with guidance on what the panel is listening for.
Each stage below links to its question bank, organised by the topics the panel scores. Questions marked as asked in most interviews should have a prepared answer; the rest are the variations and follow ups panels use to separate candidates.
Updated 26 October 2026
Consultant interviews
NHS consultant interview questions
The CV walkthrough, why this trust, what you bring, equality and inclusion, serious incidents, teaching and the presentation, from a survey of newly appointed consultants.
Specialty training
Specialty training interview questions
The published station formats for IMT, CT1 anaesthetics and ACCS, core surgery, ST1 paediatrics and ST3 posts, with the clinical scenarios that recur every year.
International doctors
NHS interview questions for IMGs
The questions trusts ask doctors joining the NHS for the first time: why the NHS, clinical governance, the deteriorating patient, a mistake, conflict and the aggressive patient.
Why candidates lose marks
The content is fine. The structure is poor.
We sit on interview panels, from medical school admissions to consultant appointments, and we see the same thing every round. The candidate knows the answer. The content is fine. The structure is poor, so the answer is poor: the example that never reaches its outcome, the clinical scenario that opens with the treatment and forgets the assessment, the governance answer with the incident at the end. The panel scores the shape, and the shape is what lets them down.
The mistake is the same at every level and so is the fix. Every question a panel asks has a structure the panel is marking against. Behavioural questions want the situation, your actions and the outcome with a line of reflection. Clinical scenarios want you to see the patient, assess, treat, decide, escalate clearly and say what comes afterwards. Dilemmas want patient safety first, then information, escalation and support. We give you the frameworks, and every question in the bank tells you which one applies.
Then you practise, out loud, against the clock, on the real questions in the real format, and the AI marks the structure as well as the content and tells you what to do again. Repetition is what makes the shape hold when you are nervous. Reading model answers does not; saying them under time pressure with someone probing does.
How to use these questions
- 1
Start with the stage you are interviewing for and read the questions marked as asked in most interviews. Outline your own examples against each, in your own words, then practise saying them aloud against a timer.
- 2
Reading answers does not prepare you for the probe that follows: what did you do next, how did you support the people involved, what would you do differently. Use spoken practice to find out whether your examples survive a follow up.
- 3
When you are ready, the AI interviewer runs the same questions as a timed panel or station, tells you which panel member is asking, probes once, and marks against what the real panel scores.