Advice for thinking of clinical situations for residency interviews?

[footcloud]

Brainstorming clinical examples (encounters with patients, teamwork, interactions etc) during clinical rotations...

Having trouble coming up with ones I could use for interview.

Especially:
-conflict with team members? I mean sure, everyone has conflict, but good ones where you can turn into positive scenarios? Sure you could say, you disagree, you talked it over, blah blah, but how to avoid sounding like you can't work well w/ people?
-making a clinical mistake ~ I know the point is to talk about the learning experience, but I mean, at the same time, what really doesn't look AS bad? Sure we all make a million mistakes, but I guess trying to find the lesser of evils?
-not getting along with a resident?

It's more the negative things that I 'm struggling with...

Any ideas? Thanks!

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[OveractiveBrain]

Brainstorming clinical examples (encounters with patients, teamwork, interactions etc) during clinical rotations...

Having trouble coming up with ones I could use for interview.

Especially:
-conflict with team members? I mean sure, everyone has conflict, but good ones where you can turn into positive scenarios? Sure you could say, you disagree, you talked it over, blah blah, but how to avoid sounding like you can't work well w/ people?
-making a clinical mistake ~ I know the point is to talk about the learning experience, but I mean, at the same time, what really doesn't look AS bad? Sure we all make a million mistakes, but I guess trying to find the lesser of evils?
-not getting along with a resident?

It's more the negative things that I 'm struggling with...

Any ideas? Thanks!

Applied to medicine. Never got any of the brain busters. Low stress. What you applying for?

 

[username456789]

Applied to medicine. Never got any of the brain busters. Low stress. What you applying for?

I actually got several of those questions during my Prelim Medicine interviews. Weird.

 

[footcloud]

I was just looking at a general list of questions and I guess any of these could be fair game? Anyone have ideas? Still trying to brainstorm examples blah.

 

[wannabeOBGYN]

Brainstorming clinical examples (encounters with patients, teamwork, interactions etc) during clinical rotations...

Having trouble coming up with ones I could use for interview.

Especially:
-conflict with team members? I mean sure, everyone has conflict, but good ones where you can turn into positive scenarios? Sure you could say, you disagree, you talked it over, blah blah, but how to avoid sounding like you can't work well w/ people?
-making a clinical mistake ~ I know the point is to talk about the learning experience, but I mean, at the same time, what really doesn't look AS bad? Sure we all make a million mistakes, but I guess trying to find the lesser of evils?
-not getting along with a resident?

It's more the negative things that I 'm struggling with...

Any ideas? Thanks!

Re: bolded portion above: just think of a scenario where you acted appropriately but someone else was completely irrational, so that it's clearly not due to your inability to work well with others. Ex: a resident trying to force you to do something you are clearly not ready or not legally able to do and then criticizing/making fun of you about it in front of other residents.

Re: underlined portion above: depends why you didn't get along with a resident. If you had good reasons and you weren't the only one who didn't get along with that resident, you're probably fine. Ex. a resident who is known to give attitude not only to lower level residents and students, but also to senior residents and attendings, or a resident who is known to have fits of rage including (but not limited to) shoving chairs, flipping tables, and throwing cellphones at people.

Caveat: be cautious in how much you share in these cases, because as real as it may be, at some point people may find it difficult to believe that those things actually happened.

 

[coldleg]

I had a few ask me to describe an interesting case. Just make sure you that when you answer, take the interviewer through the case like you're doing a presentation: HPI, physical exam, imaging, what you found/did in the OR, how the patient did.

Just don't respond "uh, I saw this EVAR that was really cool."

 

[footcloud]

Thanks for the tips guys! But wouldn't that take way too long in an interview to go through the entire presentation? I'm probably going to go with a course in hospital type of deal i.e. at most 5 sentences summarizing what happened to patient and then my learning points since I'm guessing the key point isn't details on the case and they only need to know enough so I can focus on my learning points.