Which questions are you likely to hear during residency interviews? Leigh Eck, MD—the director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at the University of Kansas Medical Center—offers some tips on common questions and how to prepare for them.
Which questions are you likely to hear during residency interviews? Leigh Eck, MD—the director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at the University of Kansas Medical Center—offers some tips on common questions and how to prepare for them.
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Dr. Eck: First of all, approaching interviews for residency with just some comfort in knowing that it's going to be a conversation in most circumstances. So removing the apprehension from the interview process and instead meeting programs with the goal of learning about programs to understand if they'll best fit your needs and if you'll best serve their mission, I think is important for students.
Unger: That was Dr. Leigh Eck, director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at the University of Kansas Medical Center and a practicing endocrinologist.
In today’s episode of Making the Rounds, she gives insider knowledge on questions you can expect during your residency interviews—and the best ways to answer them. Here’s AMA senior news writer, Brendan Murphy.
Murphy: Welcome to Making the Rounds, a podcast by the American Medical Association. I'm Brendan Murphy, senior news writer at the AMA. I'm happy to be joined by Leigh Eck, MD. Dr. Eck is the director of the internal medicine residency program at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Her team trains about 100 residents per year.
She's also a practicing endocrinologist and professor of medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine, as well as an associate dean for student affairs at KU. Welcome to the show, Dr. Eck. How are you doing today?
Dr. Eck: I am doing great. Thank you so much for having me today.
Murphy: We're very excited to have you here today and we're looking forward for your sage wisdom in telling our listeners how they can prepare for residency interviews. We're specifically going to be covering what questions they can expect to hear in interviews and what strategies they can use to answer them.
Dr. Eck: Well, I look forward to contributing to this dialogue.
Murphy: So, think a good place to start is for us to learn about your background in medical education and your current role in residency selection as a program director.
Dr. Eck: So, my work in medical education started just immediately after my internal medicine residency when I served as a chief resident in internal medicine. As a chief resident, you're really involved in the recruitment of medical students to residency. And so, I got an in-depth exposure as a chief resident. I then returned to medical education work after I completed my fellowship in endocrinology serving as our associate program director here at KU in the Internal Medicine Residency Program from 2008 to 2014. And then I've really had the fortunate opportunity to serve as our program director for internal medicine residency program here at KU since 2014. And it really is the most enriching work to meet medical students, match medical students and then train resident physicians to competency-based education in internal medicine.
Murphy: So we are in the heart of interview season for residency applicants. What would be your general advice about preparing for interviews?
Dr. Eck: We are in the heart of interview season. We actually just completed an interview session this morning with medical students. I think first of all, approaching interviews for residency with just some comfort in knowing that it's going to be a conversation in most circumstances. So, removing the apprehension from the interview process and instead meeting programs with the goal of learning about programs to understand if they'll best fit your needs and if you'll best serve their mission, I think is important for students.
And then thinking about a specific interview day, just reviewing the notes that you have in terms of preparation for questions, reviewing the program, their goals, their aims, their vision, their mission. If you happen to know who you're interviewing with, reading up on that faculty, I think all those steps as you approach the interview day will allow that to be a more comfortable session for you.
Murphy: And everyone wants to know what questions will I hear? We should probably preface this with the fact that it's going to be program dependent. It's going to be specialty dependent. But are there common questions residency applicants should expect to hear and should prepare for? And what might some of them be?
Dr. Eck: Certainly, I think there are common questions. I think your interviewers are going to want to know how you made a determination to match into their specific field. There's so many opportunities within medicine, and they're going to want to understand how you decided that you were interested in becoming an obstetrician/gynecologist, for instance, or an internist, or a general surgeon. So having a crafted answer about how you synthesize the opportunities available to you in internal medicine and decided on their field as a best match for your skill set would be important answer to synthesize ahead of interviews in a common interview question. I think you're probably going to have an opportunity to talk about your strengths as well as weaknesses. And I would encourage you to frame your weaknesses as opportunities.
So, areas that you're looking to grow and stretch based on your vantage of yourself amongst your peer cohort. You'll probably get asked about your leadership style. So wherever we are in medicine, we're asked to lead teams. So having an understanding of your leadership style and how you best serve teams, whether as a leader or as a follower, I think would be important as you approach interviews. And then finally, having an opportunity to discuss a case that was immorable to you or having an opportunity to discuss a case that really impacted you, I think would be important. So, crafting a dialogue around a patient encounter specific to the field you're pursuing would be important as you approach your interviews.
Murphy: So you mentioned—you offered a ton of great insight there, but one thing I'd like to learn a little bit more about is you mentioned strengths and weaknesses, and that's a common job interview question that extends beyond residency applications. Weaknesses, you said, should be framed as opportunities. What does that look like when done effectively?
Dr. Eck: So, I think we all have opportunities to grow. And when we look around at our peers, we see strengths in others, which we could consider as opportunities in ourself. So, if we don't frame our weaknesses as a negative connotation, but instead as an opportunity to grow and expand, I think that that will translate very effectively in an interview, and we'll de-emphasize a quality about ourselves that we think is less than our peer cohort.
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Murphy: What type of information should you be prepared to discuss related to the specialty to which you're applying?
Dr. Eck: So, I think specific to the specialty that you're applying, so you're going to want to an understanding of the program that you're meeting that day. So, understanding what is their mission, what is their vision and what are their values, and how does your value system align with that program so that you can speak in a common language with faculty.
Speaking specifically to internal medicine, which is the area that I work in, we're very interested in physicians that have effective communication skills, effective leadership skills, that have high emotional intelligence. So, I think that a student that's applying to internal medicine would want to think about how their skill set would best serve their patients utilizing communication, leadership and emotional intelligence. That might look different for other specialties. So, it would be important to sit down with faculty at your school in the specialty that you're pursuing to understand specific traits that are important to the field so that you can create your narrative to meet the needs of the field that you're entering.
Murphy: You mentioned weaknesses, but many of these applicants are coming in with loaded resumes with many strengths. How do you highlight those strengths without coming off as sort of boastful or immodest?
Dr. Eck: I think this is a really important concept. You want to approach your interview with humility in all circumstances. So I think, when you're articulating your strengths, describe your strengths with a story that defines how you applied that strength to the care of a patient. I think that's a really nice way to not come across as boastful but instead describe your strengths serving your patients. So that would be my advice is to utilize stories to carry forward your strengths and those stories should be centered around our patients in service to our teams.
Murphy: Another thing that's common in many interview settings is behavioral questions. What do those look like in a residency interview setting and how do you prepare for those behavioral questions? Such as asking for examples of leadership or teamwork.
Dr. Eck: So think behavioral questions give us the opportunity to anchor our skill set to a lived experience. So utilizing experiences in med school, whether that be in your leadership activities, your service activities, your clerkships, to describe traits and strengths that define your capabilities as a physician is a way to approach behavioral questions.
Murphy: Can you give me an example of a recent answer you heard that stuck with you?
Dr. Eck: So, I think a common behavioral question that our program asks is asking a student to consider a time where things didn't go well, where they potentially failed, and how they responded to that setback and potentially how that setback leveraged even more growth than if they hadn't faced that adversity. So that would be a common behavioral question that we use in our program. And I think we're looking for a resident physician to acknowledge that failure is going to happen and that in failure we can really experience significant growth and have the insight to recognize that it's important that we take risks, that we be okay with failure because failure pushes us forward to success.
Murphy: On the other side of the coin, are there sort of red flag type answers that might stand out in the wrong kind of way? And this could be speaking broadly of the way people approach answering questions during interviews.
Dr. Eck: Yes, I mean, we talked about the importance of humility. And so, I think any time that you're approaching an answer and not offering humility to it, any time you're not offering appropriate insight to the situation at hand, I think that would be a red flag for our faculty members. Anytime that you're placing blame on others, that certainly would be a red flag for us. Just generally stepping back from response to questions, our students have the opportunity to interface with many different people in the context of an interview day. And I think it's very important that our students approach every conversation with kindness, empathy and professionalism, because even though it may not be a conversation with a faculty member that's evaluating you, your interactions with the team at the program that you're interviewing with will be shared forward. So, it's critically important that our students approach the entire day with a professionalism, a kindness, an empathy that then will translate to their work as a resident physician.
Murphy: And we've been recording this podcast for this is our third residency selection cycle. And that answer has been relayed to us in many ways. Everyone you interact with is a de facto interviewer. So, keep that in mind in all your interactions.
Dr. Eck: Absolutely.
Murphy: When faced with hypothetical scenarios or case-based questions, what are you looking for in an applicant's response? What would be the example of a type of question they might hear in this vein?
Dr. Eck: So, I think when we pose a case-based scenario to a student, we're interested in how the student restates the scenario to us, how they interpret the question, how they synthesize their approach to the question. So as opposed to looking to a specific answer, it's more of defining a thought process. So, I think that that is important for students to recognize and realize in case-based scenarios. There's no one right answer, it's more of an opportunity to hear the student reflect, to reinterpret, to define decision making, and then come to a conclusion when put on the spot. And so, I think different faculty have different case-based scenarios that they like to utilize.
What I would encourage students to do is if they're challenged by a case-based scenario at one interview, to write down the question and sort of rethink it when they have the time and the space to do it after the interview so that the next time they're approached with a case-based scenario that may or may not be similar, they have a framework that they've developed that they can reapply to the next situation.
Murphy: There is almost always the opportunity for applicants to flip the script in the interview dynamic in that they get to ask some questions of their interview interviewer. How important is it for applicants to have thoughtful questions prepared to ask? What types of questions have impressed you in the past?
Dr. Eck: So, it is very important to have questions to ask of your interviewers. And don't hesitate to ask the same question to different interviewers, because you may run out of questions to ask. So, it's OK to ask the same question to multiple people and gain multiple perspectives. Questions that I hear students ask that I think are value added are when they're asking about potential for changes in the program when they're asking about potential for leadership transitions in the department. We had a student today that asked for an example of when we supported a resident physician that was working under difficult circumstances. So, sort of switched the behavioral script and asked the faculty member about an example where they supported a resident physician that was in a time of need.
So, I think develop a cohort of five to six questions. Certainly, as you move to meet different programs, you're going to individualize those questions. But you also want to have a bank that you utilize at each interview. So, you're gathering similar information from programs that will allow you to synthesize like information when you're forming your rank order list.
Murphy: And how fortunate are we to be speaking with the source about the topic we're talking about fresh off just interviewing applicants. That's a first for our program.
Dr. Eck: Interview season is so much fun and really enjoy meeting our students and I hope that our students really enjoy the interview season. I think in many circumstances it is low stress and highly rewarding.
Murphy: And do you have anything to add about this topic or general interview advice? General match advice, I should say.
Dr. Eck: So, I think as you move through, as a student moves through the interview season, it's a real opportunity to learn more about yourself and to recognize what you need from a residency program. So, I anticipate our students will evolve in their understanding of where they're going in their professional development as they have the opportunity to meet more programs, to meet more faculty and to learn more about the discipline that they're soon to enter.
Murphy: Well, Dr. Eck, thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show today and share this most valuable insight with our listeners.
Dr. Eck: Brendan, thank you so much for having me.
Murphy: It's been a lot of fun. This has been the Meet Your Match series on Making The Rounds. I'm AMA Senior News Writer, Brendan Murphy. Thanks for listening.
Unger: Don’t miss an episode of this special series as you prepare for your residency application. Subscribe to Making the Rounds on your favorite podcast platform or visit ama-assn.org/podcasts. Thanks for listening.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.