Shuffle your interview practice

What is your greatest strength and greatest weakness? Which one is more important to you?

What role has the internet played in the aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

What would you hope to achieve as a physician?

A friend who on the basis of religious beliefs is anti-abortion has just had an argument with their daughter who is pro-abortion rights and is asking you for advice on how to handle the situation what would you do?

Resident physicians are employees but also still completing their training. What are challenges that resident physicians face?

Have you considered other careers besides being a physician?

During COVID-19, the Maritimes created an "Atlantic Bubble". What do you think about this decision by public health?

Medical students are involved with many extracurricular activities. Choose one and talk about it.

Describe a time when you doubted yourself.

Choose a health care debate and discuss both sides. Which side do you agree with most?

Let's say you are a physician and your clinic is already running late. You see one of your patients who has been struggling recently and would require a longer appointment time to sort out their problems. However, your clinic is already running late and other patients are waiting. What are the ethical implications in this situation and what would you do?

What do you think is the biggest "problem" with the Canadian medical system? How can we fix this?

What are your thoughts and feelings on reflecting your life during the COVID pandemic?

What would you consider before moving your practice to a rural setting?

What is the most important issue facing health care today?

You are a judge for a student competition on public health. Student competitors had to present on a current health topic, describing the health issue, current solutions, and possible other health solutions. You and the rest of the judging panel have narrowed down the submission pool to two presentations; one on lung cancer and the other on geographical inequalities in population access to primary care. You and the other judges believe that both projects are extremely well done, but they vary significantly in their subject matter. The competition rules are clear that there can only be one winner. How would you go about choosing a winner?

Describe a time when you helped someone in need.

Describe a time when you learned something new.

What is your greatest weakness?

A 16-year-old child wants to have a procedure done but their parents disagree with this. What would you do as the teenager’s physician? Do you have to listen to the patient or the parents?

What are some ways to reduce healthcare inequalities in Canada?

Tell me about the best day of your life.

What is the biopsychosocial model of medicine and what role does it play in the field of medicine?

Bill-C7, which amended the Criminal Code to permit MAID for individuals whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable, was recently passed in Canada. What impact do you think this will have?

You are playing the card game hearts, and your partner is demonstrably less skilled and experienced than you. After a few hands, you both are down by over 100 points as a team, mostly because your partner keeps apologizing for making stupid mistakes during the game. What do you say to your partner?

You are a doctor working ER intake during a particularly busy shift. What do you do?

Describe a time when you felt you were treated unfairly. What did you do about it?

There have been more medical students and physicians participating in activism. What is your perspective on our role in activism?

You started your clerkship rotations coincidently with your best friend. In your conversations, he often mentions patients by name and gives details on their conditions as well as their behaviour. What are some ethical issues that may arise in such a situation?

How would you go about suggesting to a family member that they get vaccinated if they are anti-vaccine?

Explain our Canadian health care system at a level appropriate for a high school student to understand.

Do you think that physicians who, for personal reasons, feel uncomfortable with certain procedures (e.g. medically-assisted death, abortion) should be required to perform or refer for them? Why or why not? What ethical issues do you see in this situation?

What role should privacy play in telemedicine and electronic health records?

Discuss your perspective on how social media is being used in the context of medicine.

You are a medical student on rotation in the emergency department with Dr. A. A patient comes in complaining about pain in their hip. Dr. A gives them some medication and the patient very quickly appears to improve and leaves the hospital feeling better. After the patient leaves, Dr. A reveals that the drug was a placebo and that that particular patient comes in often with a pain complaint that "has no pathological basis". Dr. A says that in cases like that, a placebo can be enough to help patients feel better and that telling patient it is a placebo would ruin the effect. What ethical issues do you see here? Would you say anything to Dr. A? Should you report this behaviour?

Who is your mentor?

A drug formulary is a list of generic and brand name prescription drugs covered by your provincial health insurance. With a finite provincial budget, how would you determine which drugs should not be included in the drug formulary (not covered by health insurance)?

How would you deal with the death of a patient?

Why do you wish to attend our medical school?

Aside from the Medical Expert role, select another CanMED role and discuss why you think it is the most important one for a physician.

Why do you want to go into medicine?

What are issues that people living with addiction face during a pandemic? What are some solutions to these problems?

Lord Byron stated “always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.” What does this quote mean to you in terms of how you will pursue your career in medicine?

Imagine you are a resident and you had a patient that came in with a medical reason that was causing them lots of pain. You have properly given them narcotics according to the guidelines, however, the next day they still are complaining of pain. How would you handle this situation?

Compare and contrast between public and private health care.

Our health care system is supposed to be comprehensive, but it does not cover many services offered by optometry, dentistry, nutrition, and other components of health. What is your opinion on this and what is your solution to improve it?

Physicians are using social media to grow their network, showcase their lifestyle, and share medical tips and tricks. What are some positives and negatives of this increased exposure of physicians on social media?

Describe a time when you were wrong about something very important.

What is your opinion on doctors being suspended or facing consequences based on their social media posts?

What are some difficulties faced by physicians during the pandemic?

What role do genetics and genetic testing have in the Canadian healthcare system?

You have two patients who have been admitted after a serious accident. Both require immediate attention in order to survive. One patient is 20 years old; the other is 60 years old. Which life would you save?

Do you think physicians should lie or withhold the truth from their patients, even if its for the patient’s own good? What are some benefits to telling the truth?

Your friend tells you that he wants to take an "Introduction to Spanish" course to boost his GPA even though he is a native Spanish speaker. Native speakers are not allowed to take the course. What do you tell your friend?

Why do you like our school over other schools?

Your little cousin needs to complete 40 hours of volunteering for his school. He thinks volunteering is useless and serves no purpose since you don't get paid for it. What would you say to convince him of the benefits of volunteering?

The government wants to track citizens across the country in order to maintain public safety in the face of a pandemic. How would you advise the government to do this?

Social media platforms have been restricting content that is deemed discriminatory and offensive. What do you think about these practices?

You are a medical student. Another medical student, Sam, invites you to a study group with three other students. At the study group, you find that the students are using real cases from their clinical rotations. When you ask Sam about this, they explain that the group removes always patient identifiers and that they feel that current cases are a great way to learn medicine.What considerations should be made in this situation? Would you say anything further to Sam? Are there any other actions you would take?

Mistakes can occasionally go unnoticed, with parties involved remaining unaware that anything wrong ever occurred. Do you think it is ever appropriate to keep a mistake private? If so, when and why?

Systemic issues exist in the provincial health care system. Discuss one of them and how you would address it.

Dr. A is an exceptional surgeon, with by far the best surgical outcomes in the country. However, Dr. A is also highly prone to inter-professional conflict and is frequently disrespectful to patients, hospital staff and students. Do you think exceptional results justify problematic behaviour? If Dr. A threatened to quit in response to any required professional-development or sensitivity training, do you think that this would do more harm than good to patients? Why or why not?

What characteristics do you think are important for a physician to possess as members within a team and why?

You say you enjoy helping others. There are many other careers other than medicine where you can do that. Why medicine?

You are a family physician and another physician at the clinic is dating one of their patients. What would you do?

Imagine you were a medical student and you observed a resident making rude remarks about a patient in the team room to the other residents. How would you act?

What are the three qualities you believe would make you a great physician?

What problems lie at the intersection of indigenous people's relationship with government operated healthcare in Canada and rural communities?

Medical school applicants come from a variety of different backgrounds, with volunteer and leadership experience ranging from small local initiatives to worldwide advocacy trips. Do you think medical schools can fairly compare volunteer and leadership experiences that are dissimilar? If you were in charge of medical school admissions, how would you evaluate applicants’ co-curricular experiences?

Describe a time when you had to deliver bad news.

In Ontario, patients will soon be able to read the medical notes their physicians write about them. What are the implications of this change?

Physicians are expected to be leaders. In today’s health care system, do you think leadership is important – if so, why?

When do laws deviate from ethics?

Recently truckers have gathered to form a convoy in protest of certain decisions made by the federal government. What are your thoughts on this demonstration?

Pick a health topic that is relevant to today’s society and discuss your thoughts on it.

In Ontario, pharmacists are able to prescribe certain medications to patients now. What are some pros and cons of this change?

Describe a time when you had to be a follower.

Imagine you were a medical student and now you observed a resident behaving rudely with a patient. What would you do?

Experimental medicine can introduce hugely effective new methods of treatment for pathologies that previously could not be treated. Do you think experimental medicine research should be done with children? Why or why not?

What is the Jordan principle? What are some long-term benefits of this principle to a child’s life?

Describe a time when you stood up to an authority figure.

What is one currently feasible change you could make to improve the condition of indigenous and rural healthcare?

With AI slowly creeping its way into the healthcare field, what are three pros and three cons of AI in medicine?

You are a family physician. You notice bruises on your patient, a 10 year boy. What would you do?

During your final exams week, your grandmother calls and tells you she feels lonely. What would you do?

Describe a time when you stood up for someone.

Describe a time when you felt ashamed.

Orphan diseases are diseases whose rarity means there is a lack of a market large enough to gain support and resources for discovering treatments for them. What is your approach to treating orphan diseases?

Some medical schools have a preference for selecting medical candidates from certain geographical locations. What are your thoughts about such selection policies?

Certain hospital services like deliveries in obgyn after midnight get paid more compared to other times of the day. What are the implications for these types of payment policies?

Describe a time when you felt excited. What happened?

Why do you want to be a doctor?

Discuss one extracurricular experience where you had an impact on another individual?

Is there a policy at an institution or organization you were a part of that you disagreed with? If so, why?

A physician picked up a car accident victim from the street and brought him to the ER in his car. He did not want to wait for an ambulance because the patient’s condition was critical. Physical examination in the ER reveals quadriplegia. Is the physician liable for this consequence?

What do you think health inequality means? What does health inequity mean? Have you ever felt treated unfairly in your own life?

Why is confidentiality important for physicians? In what cases should physicians breach confidentiality? Have you ever had to break confidentiality in your life? Why or why not?

Describe a time when you made sacrifices to excel at something (can be any activity).

What responsibilities do physicians have in informing the general public about topics related to medicine?

It is not uncommon for medications to have various adverse side effects. As a physician, how would you help your patients navigate those side effects? How would you determine whether a treatment option is worth any adverse effects or risks?