Skip to main content

Table 2 A sample of examiners’ interview guide (Station 3*)

From: Past-behavioural versus situational questions in a postgraduate admissions multiple mini-interview: a reliability and acceptability comparison

Question type

Instruction

Question 1

✓Please do not ask any personal questions except brief and neutral greetings before starting.

PBQ

✓This question is to assess the ability of ‘communicating effectively with patients’. [IV. A. 5. d. (1)]

 

✓The question to be initiated:

 Tell me about a difficult, cranky patient you had to take care of most recently during your NOIPCTP**.

 

 Please make your answer specific and concrete including the patient’s age, sex, problems, diagnosis, and management.

 

✓Please use STAR*** approach as follows. Please do not make any other probing or follow-up questions.

 

 # What was the Situation***? , and what was your Task***?

 

 # What was your Action***? How did you behave to establish a better relationship?

 

 # What was the Result***? How did you obtain feedback from the patient or your team members?

Question 2

✓This question is to assess the ability of ‘communicating effectively with physicians’. [IV. A. 5. d. (2)]

SQ

✓The scenario to be presented:

You have been working as a Year-1 resident of your specialty for 6 months. You have set in well with your new training environment. During a regular morning round, your clinical supervisor disagrees with one of your patient’s management plans which you feel confident about. You feel that you have been more involved in the care of this patient than the supervisor, including an understanding about the patient’s socioeconomic background. This supervisor is enthusiastic about patient care and teaching trainees, but you know that he does not like to have his authority questioned. He also seems to be inflexible in his thinking. How would you handle this situation?

 

✓Please use following probing****. Please do not make any other probing questions.

 

 # Why would you take that action?

 

 # Is there any possible alternative ways in case that your initial plans do not work?

 

 # What are the advantages and disadvantages amongst your approaches?

  1. *This station is to assess Interpersonal and Communication Skills (ICS) amongst the ACGME competencies.
  2. **NOIPCTP: National Obligatory Initial Postgraduate Clinical Training Programme [37].
  3. ***STAR approach as described by Bangerter [38]. STAR is an abbreviation for Situation-Task-Action-Result probing question sequence, as indicated by boldfaced letters.
  4. ****Structured probing in SQ interviews was described by Levashina [27].
  5. ✓ Detailed instruction items.
  6. # Specific probing questions to be asked.