Tips to ensure a revealing interview
Choosing your interview questions carefully can be helpful in the selection process. "If you ask in-depth questions for which there isn't a pat answer, people will tell you a lot about themselves," says Maryfran Hughes, RN, MSN, CEN, nurse manager of the ED at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "Your role as interviewer is to ask questions to get at the root of the applicant's style of practice." Here are some questions to pose to applicants in your ED:
1. Recount a particular patient situation that helped develop your practice. Having applicants describe a situation that is meaningful to them can be revealing. "If they are trying to show their patient advocacy or their incorporation of the family, the situation they choose will bring that out," says Hughes. "You really get an in-depth peek at the way they practice, which can be very telling."
Some applicants will focus on the patient in the scenario. "They may talk about making sure the patient's family had the opportunity to be there," says Hughes. "In doing that, they reveal an awareness of caring and compassion in the middle of doing a lot of technical things that need to be done emergently."
Other applicants will focus on tangible clinical concerns, such as interpreting blood gas values or watching monitors. "In some of the scenarios, you can't really see the patient in there, which is very revealing," says Hughes.
Sometimes in describing clinical scenarios, applicants may mention difficulties in interactions. "They may complain about certain disciplines that may not come on time," notes Hughes. "This can be a sign of a problem with the applicant's attitude, or a problem with their former facility, so it's important to ask questions which get at the heart of the matter."
2. If I called a patient you have taken care of in the past week, what do you think they would say to me? "In the course of that, you get a glimpse into the person's style of practice," says Hughes. "It gives you a good idea if they are patient advocates. Some may say my sense of humor helped relieve the patient's anxiety, while others may say they felt I was a competent nurse, they knew they'd get their medication on time, and don't go beyond that."
Applicants tend to answer the question honestly, says Hughes. "Generally, I have seen the same nurse in the clinical practice as in the interviewing setting-there have been no surprises," she reports.
3. How would you handle a situation where the patient wants to be admitted, but their private doctor doesn't want them to be? This question can demonstrate a physician's concern for patient's wishes. "I want a physician who's going to spend enough time with both sides, not tell them to decide among themselves and come back later," says Dighton Packard, MD, FACEP, medical director of the ED at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, TX.
4. What if you have decided to discharge a patient, but the nurse disagrees with your assessment? "I want to see how the physician would handle a conflict with a nurse," says Packard. "If they say, well, I would very carefully explain my decision to her and hope she understands, that's the same thing as `Because I said so,' which is a big danger signal. The correct response is that many times nurses save my butt, so I would sit down and ask her why, then go back and see the patient again."
5. If you hear a private doctor arguing with a nurse in the work area for an error, would you get involved? This question screens for physicians who are willing to take ownership of the department, says Packard. "I'm looking for somebody who is willing to take control of the department, and say, I know you all have a problem, but let's go into the break room and discuss it there," he explains. "The correct response is to take the dispute out of the public area, because it's harmful for the overall image of the department."
6. Why do you want to work here? "If they say because it's close to home, that's not a good enough reason," says Liz Jazwiec, RN, a Crestwood-IL-based consultant specializing in hiring issues. "If a nurse wants an internal transfer and it's because she doesn't like the shift she's working upstairs, that's not a good reason."
7. What would you bring to the ED? "If they say I'm bringing enthusiasm, that's fine, but if they say a high level of expertise and think they're God's gift, that's a problem," says Jazwiec.
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