Dr. Osorio & Dr. Rodriguez are back to touch upon Behavioral interview questions that were designed to uncover or reveal personality flaws or potential ethical issues that an applicant could bring into the program and are trying to elicit “red flags.” They are there to try to unveil personality flaws or behavioral traits before starting the training program, and that could potentially avoid, in the future, to deal with a disruptive resident. These screening questions are targeted at filtering the possible “bad apples” from the large cohort of applicants across the residency application program.
A good summary of things to consider has been created and made available by UCLA’s medical school at:
In general, the Interviewing Process is an expensive and long one for which you must be fully prepared and be ready to endure long days of mental concentration and resilience. Some of the most useful links that I have found on the internet provided by the AAMC (American Association of Medical Colleges) website and the link for some reliable information is here: The Cost of Interviewing for Residency.
And for the elective year of 2020, special considerations will be made to virtual/online video interviewing, which is a modification of the standard process, due to the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic. Important topics of discussion and some pointers about this will be found here: https://www.aamc.org/what-we-do/mission-areas/medical-education/conducting-interviews-during-coronavirus-pandemic.
The reason why we dedicated a long series of podcasts on this topic emphasizes the importance of timely and proper preparation and rehearsal to perform your best at the face to face or virtual interview. I hope these resources give you a glimpse into what you should expect, and will target to be a framework of reference that by no means is considered the standard for everyone. Remember, the success and or failure during the interview relies 100% on you.
But remember, it’s like a test with an open book, you will be given the tools and tips for preparation and is entirely up to the applicant to dedicate time and effort for the proper training to ace this grueling and anxiety-provoking phase of the Residency Application to the USA as an FMG/IMG.