Hey labrat, I wish you the best of luck on your interview. It only takes one! I didn't interview there, but I'll list some good questions that interviewers often ask (I think they are from the EssayEdge website).
If you change the title of your thread to "SLU interview help", you might get more responses.
Questions:
Outline of Interview
I. Questions about self
II. Hypotheticals
III. More questions about self
(5-15 minutes per section. ~30minutes total)
Questions about self
1. What led you to pursue medicine as a career?
2. Why do you want to be a doctor?
3. Have you considered other health care careers?
4. What qualities do you have that convince you you'll make a successful doctor?
5. How much have you worked with or interacted with physicians?
6. What qualities did those doctors exhibit that you admire?
7. What qualities did they have that you disliked?
8. If I had to choose between you and one other very similar applicant, what makes you stand out from the other applicant?
9. What are your biggest weaknesses?
10. What do you do in your spare time? Why?
11. Tell me about your hospital experiences.
12. What is the most difficult thing you've had to experience?
13. What sort of adversity did you face in your life?
14. What do you consider your biggest failure in life? How did you deal with it?
15. What is a difficult ethical dilemma that you have personally had to deal with?
16. What is your personal philosophy about effective learning?
17. Do you have any experience with foreign health care systems? What is better about them? Worse?
18. What is the last book you read for leisure?
19. How many schools did you apply to? Have you been accepted yet? What is your first choice? Would you re-apply if you don't get in to your first choice?
20. Why did you re-take the MCAT? How were you able to improve your score?
21. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? 20 years?
Hypotheticals
1. What would you do if a 15 year-old in your small town asked for an abortion and you were the only provider?
2. What is the biggest healthcare problem today and how would you change it?
3. What is/was the most newsworthy item (so far) in 2001/2002?
4. What are some of the difficult issues facing doctors today?
5. How would you respond to a terminally ill patient's request that you assist in their suicide? What if they wanted you to simply kill them? How would this differ from "removal of care?"
6. You are a resident at a local hospital, and while driving home from a movie one night you notice your attending physician on the side of the road undergoing a DUI test. What do you do?
7. At the nurses' station you notice that the file of a prominent local politician happens to be out, what do you do? What if it is already open? What if you accidentally notice some of the info? What if it was a relative? A distant friend from college?
8. You suspect a patient is complaining of pain solely to get pain medication. What do you do?
9. What do you see as some of the responsibilities of a physician in the community beyond being a health care provider?
10. A 25 year-old man involved in a motorcycle accident is brought in to the ER DOA. His family and wife of less than a year arrive. She says they have been trying to have a baby, and comes up with the idea that some of his sperm could be removed and used for artificial insemination. How do you respond?
11. Three people need a liver transplant. One is a 15 month old baby with Downs, another is a 42 year old jailed alcoholic, the last is Walter Paytons who has a rare liver disorder. Who do you decide gets the transplant?
12. A 62 year-old widow is on life support, and her two sons have conflicting views as to whether she should stay on or not. What do you decide?
13. How do you envision this "health care" system being implemented that you wrote about in your application?
14. How do you feel about the death penalty?
15. You get a needle stick while doing blood work on a homeless IV drug user. How do you react? Look up records? Surreptitiously test him?
16. How do you feel about Bush's new prescription plan for seniors?
17. A patient you have been following with terminal cancer calls you to say he is planning to take a large dose of cached pain pills that you have prescribed him. You are in the middle of an exam, how do you respond?
18. Does it worry you that over one third of residents reported in a recent poll that they would not choose medicine as a career path again?
19. A good friend comes to you for STD treatment, but he/she asks you not to hell his/her spouse. What do you do?
20. The 12 year-old child of a Jehovah's witness is being treated after being hit by a car while riding a bicycle. He needs a blood transfusion, but his mother refuses as it is against their religion. What do you do? (the child looks scared, and is asking his mother questions that indicate he wants the transfusion)
21. How do you feel the Bush administration will affect abortion rights in the US?
22. How can we control health care costs?
23. How do you feel about limiting services as a way to control costs (such as HMO's have been known to do)?
24. If you could freeze time for 30 days, what would you do in that time?
25. Are you interested in rural care? Why?
26. How do you feel about the fact that the majority of private practices in the state of Washington LOST money in the year 2000.
27. A surgeon you work with tests + for HIV, yet wants to keep it a secret and continue to work. What about if you notice he is being unsafe with patients?
28. Who would you choose as Time person of the year for 2002? Who was Time person of the year in 2001?
29. A patient with a DNR order is going into heart failure. With some last gasps, he says "I change my mind, I want to be saved." What do you do?
30. You suspect a mother of child abuse, what do you do?
31. A mother and daughter from Africa come to your office requesting that the daughter be "circumcised" as is customary in their country. What do you do?
32. Who are your US senators? Who is the US congressman from your district? Who is the mayor of your city? Governor? (esp for state schools)
33. What do you think will be the biggest medical breakthrough in the next five years?
34. How do you feel that many "breakthroughs" in medicine are simply high-priced alternatives for procedures that are mostly elective anyhow?
35. How can we reduce the cost of prescription drugs?
36. Should drug companies be forced to give away HIV or other medications to poor countries in Africa or Latin America?
