A list of questions

My interview is on Friday and I am totally starting to freak out. 61 hours away. I have 3 outfits ready to go but I dont know which one I am going to go with yet. I also have no idea about how to do my hair. I have compiled myself a list of questions that people have been asked at previous med school interviews and I really need to sit down and have a good hard think about all of the answers.

1) A man has been responsible for taking care of his wife who is in a vegetative state for 6 years after a car accident. She can breathe on her own but that is the extent of her abilities. He requests that her feeding tube be removed. What should you, as her physician do? Why?

2) A student is working in a clinic where the office double books aboriginal patients. The student asks their reasoning and the receptionist replies that “Those people never show up for their appointments.” How would you deal with this situation?

3) You are working on a group project with 5 other students. One of the students doesn’t show up for meetings or if they do show up – they are late and leave early. They have put no effort into the group project but show up on the day of the presentation and try to take credit for the project. What do you do in this situation?

4) Mrs. Jones has signed a donor card indicating that she is willing to donate her body to science without notifying her husband and son. She gets into an accident and it is determined she is brain dead. The family doctor, who is on call that afternoon, reviews the chart and determines that she would be perfect for medical students to practice the removal of organs for transplantation purposes. The doctor then talks to the family to discuss the procedure and to confirm their consent. They both oppose the procedure and refuse to allow their doctor to move forward. The doctor points out that Mrs. Jones could be helping hundreds of people by educating the medical students and that technically consent has already been provided. The husband understands how beneficial the educational experience is but is too emotional to allow them to continue. The son, a medical student, refuses because he knows the bodies are not treated with dignity. If you were the doctor, how would you proceed? Why?

5) You are spending your evening as a JURSI in the hospital. It is late and you see a member of the staff duck into the supply closet with an empty bag and reappear in a few minutes with it appearing full. You have heard other staff members discussing that supplies are missing on a regular basis that can not be accounted for. After observing the actions of the other staff member, what do you do?

6) You are a second year student shadowing a doctor in the O.R. Once the patient, an obese female has been given general anesthetic and the procedure is underway the doctors start to make comments about her weight and call her names that you find inappropriate but most of all unprofessional. Do you talk to the doctor about his comments or do you keep your comments to yourself? Why?

7) Two patients need a liver transplant, but there is only one liver available at the time. Tell the interviewer how you would decide between:
a) a 64-year old retired politician who happens to be an alcoholic, or
b) a 26-year old mother of three who is on welfare.

8) You are part of a committee to decide where the money for health care in Geelong is spent. It is your turn to inform the committee of your opinion on what you think is the single most important area requiring funding.

9) Discuss the social, legal, medical implications of a needle-exchange program with the interviewer. Follow up question: What are some viable alternatives?

10) What is the most brilliant idea you've ever had?

11) Pretend that medical school interviews changed to the same format as speed dating: you've got five minutes to convince me you'd be a good doctor. What would you say?

12) Do you think it is ethical to require doctors to spend a pre-arranged amount of time, say three years, in a rural/remote community, not necessarily of their choice?

13) If you are a vegetarian and in serious debt with no money to buy vegetarian food, will you eat regular food?

14) I was asked whether I've seen a good movie lately and what I thought about it

15) What I thought was the greatest innovation in health care.

16) The second was a follow-up question from my answer for the public vs private health care question and I was asked why I thought lower-class people become sick more often than upper-class people. I'd always known it to be true but never really put thought into why it was.

17) What would you do if you were obliged to exert medicine in a rural context for your first 4 years of medical practice but if your wife wanted you and the kids to stay in the city?

18) You are the CEO of a large Australian company and 9 of your employees have been held hostage overseas. What would you do?

19) You are a medical student doing the hospital attachment during the Locomotion Unit. Your tutor introduces a young woman with rheumatoid arthritis to your group. She has tried all of the conventional treatments but is still having problems. Unless her symptoms improve she will have to give up work in the near future. The tutor tells you that there is a new, but very expensive treatment available. Treatment for a single patient costs as much as conventional treatment for 10 patients. The drug is not effective in all patients and in some cases gives rise to a worsening of the symptoms. The tutor asks the group what should be done.

20) One of your tutorial group has not attended any of the teaching sessions for a week. Members of the group have tried to make contact on the phone but have not been able to get through. There is no reply to text messages that you have sent. You decide to call round to your friend's flat where you find them staring at a blank television screen. What are you going to do?

21) Why medicine? One thing that I would recommend to everyone (if you haven't done this already) is to be very clear about your reasons for applying to do med. They asked me what steps I went through to determine that it was the career for me, and I'm glad that I mulled over this for some time beforehand as even a simple question like this can lead to a convoluted answer, despite one's best intentions.

22) Tell us about yourself. What are your hobbies? How will you handle not having time for any of them? Are you close to your family? How will you handle not seeing them? How will you support yourself through medicine? What will be your support networks and how you'll get through the course. How will your life change when you are studying medicine? How do you deal with criticism? Personal strengths/weaknesses. What would you change about yourself? Stress management

23) Biggest disappointment and how did you deal with it

24) Definitions: Laser, photosynthesis, insulin, minority group- can't remember the others. you'll have to explain a technical scientific term as you would to a patient - avoiding scientific jargon.

25) Debate/discussion: Stem cells

26) Where have you formed your opinions of the medical profession?

27) The scenario was that Sue owned a diner, and while she went away on holidays for a week, sales dropped. There were other things about the location of the diner, that they sold petrol too, who was left in charge. We had to hypothesise about reasons, and back them up. We were given more information, and asked to elaborate.

28) why you would like to go to ND

29) have a good long think about teamwork, how you fit into a team, the good and bad of being a doctor

30) The pros and cons of being a medical student/doctor and what you've done to find out about them

31) What makes good and bad doctors

32) Typical job interview style questions on leadership, team work, dealing with difficult people, difficult decisions and their consequences. Tell us about a difficult decision you made and how did you come about to making it. Describe a situation where you demonstrated teamwork. Good and bad group situations, when did you have to lead a group?

33) provided with an ethical situation. It will be along the lines of "you are a medical student and the doctor asks you to see Mrs So and So who has...." and you are asked to tell the panel what you would do/say to the patient. You may also be asked something about the behaviour/mood/feelings of the patient.

34) What you know about post graduate training

I think I may be starting to get obsessive but I figure if I have thought about all of these type of things then it should be pretty hard to throw me in the interview. Me throwing up is another matter entirely.

In other news, Mum is moving to Gerringong to be closer to her new restaurant. She did try for a house that is seeable from the reastaurant but it was not to be. The one she got is a townhouse in the middle of the town. I haven't seen inside yet but the location is good and it sounds really nice from what mum told me.

The travel is slowly killing us and we live each day with the November finish line in sight. I cannot wait for uni to be over. I will finally have a degree 9 years after I first started. And I can have a day where I don't feel guilty if I don't spend it studying.

Well I have to go and write a prac report (lucky me)