Take a moment to put yourself in the shoes of an interviewer. Now imagine you are interviewing a large number of young doctors with just a few training posts that are available. How would you decide who should be prioritised for offers? How do you go about fairly ranking them from highest to lowest? Next, add the pressure of knowing that all the candidates have already shown good potential via the application shortlisting process. Finally, increase the complexity by realising that your assessments and recommendations need to be consistent with all of the other interviewers who are also interviewing doctors in the same process.
Thankfully, if you were an interviewer for any of the higher training programmes, such as IMT or CST, then the process has already been designed for you. The scoring criteria are already defined. What’s more, if you are one of the doctors preparing for the interview, then scoring criteria are freely available to you. So, both interviewers and interviewees can use this information to effectively prepare for the task in hand.
3 aspects of communication
Communication is an important element for grading in any medical interview – more so now than ever.
This year’s IMT interview scoring format has increased the emphasis on communication with dedicated points now available in both Station 1, where you are asked questions, and Station 2, the Clinical Scenario.
Core Surgical Training CST1 interview scoring criteria explicitly lists points for communication in the management question section and clinical scenarios. You should also expect to respond to questions at the end of the Presentation section.
Although the exact interview scoring criteria vary from one programme to another, we can consider communication from 3 aspects which are relevant to all:
- Your communication on the day of your interview
- Your communication with your patients
- Your communication with your team members and colleagues
Communication on the day of your interview
In the earliest stages of your preparation, this may seem like the most obvious of the 3 aspects. You want to be able to respond effectively to the interviewers questions. You want to be able clearly articulate your experiences and opinions, to demonstrate your skills and potential to the best of your abilities. Good interview preparation includes proactively reflecting on your on your key experiences, learning how to remain calm and also how to present your information in a coherent, logical order.
Improving performance on this level is a common motivation for doctors choosing to take our interview preparation courses.
Communication with your patients
You ability to directly communicate with your patients will be assessed in any medical interview process. However, the approach taken varies from one programme to another. Some processes will expect you to be able to share previous patient experiences. They may want to hear more than just good examples. They may well be interested in those which went less well and what you learned. Other processes will present you with a situation and ask what you would say to the patient in such circumstances. And some processes observe your interactions with a trained actor. You can check which method will be used in the webpages of any programme you are applying for.
You may already be good at this aspect of communication. After all, you are probably interacting with a broad range of patients every day. But are you confident that you are the best you can be? Have you set aside time to consider the fundamental elements of patient communication? Have you identified your strengths and where you can improve?
Communication with your colleagues
You can also expect your interviewers to scrutinise your interactions with your colleagues. The assessment may overlap with the patient communication scenario if it includes a handover stage. Alternatively, you may be asked to share a difficult experience you had with your team members. The interviewers may want to explore any challenges where you had to make your voice heard, to raise concerns or to gain support from someone else.
Again, you may already be good at this. The other candidates in the interview process could also be good. So, how much time have you spent on improving your awareness of what your fellow healthcare professionals need from you? What methods have you consciously adopted to ensure that you are clearly heard and understood?
Optimising your chances of success
It’s always important to recognise that, when there are an excess number of applicants, an interview process is a competition, rather than a pass/fail style exam. The interviewers want to find out as much as they can about each of the candidates in a consistent manner.
Your challenge, as the interviewee, is to at least prove you are appointable. But you need to be more than that. You want to ensure you at least avoid a low score in any of the set criteria. A high score requires dedicating time and effort for proper preparation in all elements. And that includes focusing on your communication skills.
Develop your abilities. Maximise your potential.
Stephen McGuire – Managing Director
