Common Nursing Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

So one of the questions that you might get is tell us about a time you had a conflict with a colleague, and how did you resolve it? 

Keith, what's the best way to answer that question specifically?

People have a hard time talking about this particular topic because conflict is something we like to avoid, generally as human.

So you have to think back on a time when there was some sort of disagreement or some sort of conflict where you needed to come to some type of positive resolution. It doesn't have to be a conflict where you're yelling and screaming at each other. Hopefully, it is not - it just has to be an area of disagreement. That's what we often mean by conflict.

So if the physician was making an order and you agreed with the order, and that might not be something thing that doctors were would question a doctor. But here in the United States, it's quite common for a nurse or a doctor that order questioning why you're ordering that particular medication or I think that dose might be incorrect.

So that's very common here and it's expected of a nurse to actually be able to go to a physician in question in order because you will be held responsible if you wrong medication or the wrong dose. So it really goes back to that the STAR method in a sense, where you had the situation at hand, and then the action you took and speaking with the doctor, since and how you actually approached that person with the job at hand, how it was resolved, what was the resolution? What was the conclusion of that situation? So this is a very difficult one to be prepared here in the United States, I would say that it's a very common interview question and you need to have a couple of polls so that you can respond to it and show on how you communicate.

One thing I want to add, Tanya, that any questions asked in the interview, I always tell my career coaching clients always say think about "Why are they asking me this question?" "What do they truly want to know of me"

So when they're asking a behavioral type question think in the back of your mind, "what does this person really want to know", "what are they after" and try to answer the question in relation to be very helpful.

That's a great tip Keith. For many international nurses, they come from cultures where the the doctor is not to be questioned. And you know it can be quite difficult for that for nurses to ask that question. But at the end of the day the employer is really just looking to see if you are able to handle conflict and resolve it in a positive way.