Clinical Questions on Interviews!!! What were yours?

mitchell79 · Oct 20, 2009

They do that?! Your starting to freak me out.

diane227, LPN, RN · Oct 20, 2009

When I used to interview new grads for a job I used to ask them the following questions:

1. What was your favorite rotation in nursing school and why?

2. What do you feel where your strong areas in nursing school?

3. What were your weak areas?

4. What is your greatest area of interest? What type of area would you like to be working in in 10 years? What is your long term goal.

5. What are the positive attributes that you would bring to this job? What areas are weak for you that you need help with.

6. How do you feel with stress?

7. If a physician yelled at you, what would you do?

8. If a family member yelled at you, what would you do?

PEBBLES1 · Oct 20, 2009

I already work in a hospital, so my questions are why this particular floor or why do you want to work for this hospital

RN <>< · Oct 20, 2009

They gave me a question that went something like this.

Patient in rm 1 has Cellulitis

Patient in rm 2 has a headache and is asking for Tylenol

Patient in rm 3 has DKA

Patient in rm 4's wife says one side of her husbands face is just started to droop.

Which would you see first? How would you handle the other patients while taking care of the one you choose? What would you do for the patient that you choose? What would you expect the doctor to order. etc......

They are hoping that you remember that you have resources such as other nurses and patient care techs to help.

Anyway that was just one that I remember.

Good Luck

teeniebert, LPN · Oct 21, 2009

"We deal with diabetes quite a lot here. In terms of blood sugar, what is 'low' to you?"

We talked about high and low blood sugar and interventions for a bit, that's the only specific one I remember.

My favorite question, though, was, "say it's dinner time and an aide comes out of the dining room, freaking out, and says, 'Mr. Soandso just threw up blood, all over the table!' how would you respond?" It turned out this situation had actually happened a few weeks before I interviewed. I got brownie points, I think, for answering from a management standpoint and a nursing standpoint. Assign an aide or two to get everyone else away from the table and order new meal trays (if they still want to eat) while I take Mr. Soandso to his room for assessment, and ask another nurse to call the doctor, the family, and an ambulance, in that order.

Most of the questions I got were about the management aspects of the job, rather than the clinical aspects, but the aides on my floor are super awesome and I rarely have to 'manage' them.

Visuals · Oct 23, 2009

Thanks guys.. this was helpful

MissBrittanyRN · Oct 23, 2009

I have been on three. Two asked no clinical questions, just the other interview kind. One job gave me a written test before my interview and it was an urgent care center. They asked about a lot of the common meds: lasix, some ACLS drugs, Digoxin, a few anesthetics, protonix, antidiabetics. I am a new grad so fortunately it was just to match them up with their indication. They gave me a chart with vaccination age, route, drug and you had to fill in the blank areas of the chart. they asked for sx of DKA, hypoglycemia, wanted to know gauge and needle lengths or different injections.

MissBrittanyRN · Oct 23, 2009

FYI I understand that we don't have much of an option these days to be picky about our jobs as new grads, but if you can help it, you probably want to go for the position in which the interviewer mostly focused on the "about you" questions and not the clinical questions. they should not expect you to know all of the answers, but they need to learn about you and what type of employee and learner, and effort you will put into learning.

caliotter3 · Oct 23, 2009

After leaving a place that was going through a scandalous time, I was interviewed by a panel at one prospective employer. I was asked numerous questions concerning work behaviors. As the interview went on, I became very, very aware that I was being "quizzed" on the workplace situation that I had just left, to include clinical questions concerning incidents with patients there. The clincher was when the honcho of the group made comments about the former DON. I was made to feel very uncomfortable even though I felt that I answered the questions well. This experience brought home to me the fact that nursing is a small world and places and people are discussed in the nursing community; sometimes they are discussed a lot and for a very long time.