Interview
The interview section on the PHST recruitment website is directly applicable to IMY3 regarding invitation and booking, interview preparation and after the interview. Where it differs is about the structure and content of the interview and the scoring framework, which is covered on the other tabs in this section.
General format
The main stage of your application to IMY3 is the interview. IMY3 interviews are held online via Qpercom Recruit, a bespoke system used in specialty recruitment.
The interview is delivered using a two-station format, where questions will be divided across the stations with a different pair of interviewers asking and scoring the questions in each.
Each interview station consists of two scoring interviewers. In some cases a third clinician may be present to share questioning of candidates and help with the running of the day. However you will only be scored by two clinican interviewers in each station.
Time required at interview
The exact timing may vary but typically it will involve the following:
- Arrival - interview slot times are usually set for around 30 minutes before your interview is planned to begin. This time is used to register your arrival and check your idenitification.
- Interview - the interview is spread across two 16-minute stations, with a few minutes' preparation time before each station. This means the total interview time will be about 40 minutes.
- After interview - in most cases you will be free to go as soon as your interview ends. If there is any need to discuss anything with you after the interview you will be notified, but this is not usual.
- Total time - the advice is that you should expect to spend about two hours for your interview. In most cases this will be less, but the schedule can oftern over-run. This is just a rough guide and it cannot be guaranteed that all candidates will be able to leave within two hours of their arrival time so please bear this in mind when planning the rest of your day.
Note taking during interviews
You are allowed to make notes during the interview to help you structure your answers; this is most likely to be for scenario-based questions with designated reading time before the question starts. Any notes taken must not be shared with anyone and must be destroyed as soon as the interview has been completed.
Sharing information about the interview
Whilst it is natural that you may wish to discuss your experience at interview with others, you must not share detailed information about the interview, beyond that which is publicly available (i.e which is available from this website) - specifically, the content and format of questions asked. Ultimately this may reduce your own chances of success and is unfair to all other candidates.
Individual questions are also changed regularly at each interview centre and candidates are advised against altering their behaviour based on the advice of other candidates.
Lay representatives
Lay representatives will be used to monitor interviews. They will not be involved in candidate assessment; their role is to assist in the quality assurance of the interview process.
They will observe a selection of interviews so you may or may not have one present during your interview.
Structure and content
The interview will be split across two separate 16-minute stations with a separate pair of interviewers scoring you on the areas within their station. There will be four questions between 6 - 10 minutes in length. You will be marked on these questions and your communication skills in each station, giving six scored areas in total. The headings below show the question areas and in which station they will be covered, along with information about what will be assessed.
Please note that this could be subject to change and will be confirmed by the date of interview.
Before entering the station, you will be given a few minutes to review a clinical scenario. You will be asked questions relating to this scenario for approximately 8 minutes. Questioning in the scenario may cover the following:
-
what next steps you would take, e.g. further investigations
-
your differential diagnoses
-
any potential treatments possible
-
any further information you would gather
-
how you would go about communicating with any people (e.g. patients, family members, colleagues) involved in the scenario.
The clinical scenario will be relatively brief (a few sentences), so most of the time will be used for mental preparation. Whilst it is permitted to make notes, these must be destroyed as soon as your interview is completed and not shared with anyone.
Following the first clinical scenario, you will be given a second clinical scenario to consider. This question will not be available to you to consider in advance and the scenario will be given verbally by the interviewers. You will be asked questions on this scenario for approximately 8 minutes.
The scenario will follow the same pattern as the first clinical scenario. That is, it will describe a clinical situation and the areas to consider are the same as for the first clinical scenario.
Not an actual question, you will be assessed and scored specifically on the communication skills you demonstrate throughout the station.
This will be both an assessment of how you would communicate with patients, colleagues, etc, in the scenario, as well as of how you communicate with interviewers throughout all questions.
This question will see you given a scenario to review which focuses on one or more of these areas. As with the clinical scenario, it takes the form of a hypothetical situation, described briefly in text form, which will be given to you in the time before the start of the station. You will then be asked questions about how you would manage this situation.
This question will not focus on clinical aspects, and will deal with the moral, ethical, legal etc. issues of a particular situation.
There are 6 minutes allocated to questioning in this area and where there is time available after completion of the scenario questions, you will be asked some general principle questions relating to ethical, professionalism or governance issues.
Your answers should be guided by GMC Good Medical Practice.
This question will explore the non-clinical aspects of being a medical registrar, focusing on two of the Capabilities in Practice (CiPs) from the Internal Medicine Stage 1 curriculum:
- Managing an acute unselected take
- Managing a multi-disciplinary team including effective discharge planning
The discussion will be prompted by a short question provided by interviewers. This will not be given to you before - this will be given verbally by interviewers once the previous question is finished. This question will last approximately 10 minutes.
Questioning will ask you to draw on your experience of managing a team caring for acute medical admissions by giving examples of how you have managed that type of situation.
IMY3 Scoring framework
The score of 1-5 an interviewer will award you for each assessment area is judged in relation to how well you perform against an expected level. These scores will be used to ascertain your appointability status and overall score.
The table below shoes the framework used by interviewers to guide scoring at interview: 3/5 is considered a satisfactory score; and reflects the level of performance that would be expected of a trainee ready to progress to IMY3. Should your performance go above and beyond this expected level, interviewers can award marks of 4/5 or 5/5 as appropriate.
Conversely, should your interview performance not reach the expected level, then interviewers can award marks of 1/5 or 2/5, as reflects their level of concern over your performance.
|
Mark |
Rating |
Assessment |
|
1 |
poor |
not considered appointable |
|
2 |
area for concern |
performed below the level expected during IMY2; |
|
3 |
satisfactory |
performed at the level expected on completion of IMY2; |
|
4 |
good |
performed at the level expected mid-way through IMY3; |
|
5 |
excellent |
performed at the level expected on completion of IMY3 or above; |
Appointability
From the twelve scores awarded during your interview, an 'appointability' status will be calculated to determine whether or not you can be considered for an offer.
The intention is to ensure successful candidates can display competence consistently across all areas of assessment covered at interview; rather than allowing outstanding acheivement in one or more areas to make up for sub-par performance elsewhere.
Appointability is awarded automatically, and is based on two factors: individual interview scores and the 'raw interview score' (RIS).
Appointability requirements
To be classed as 'appointable', you must meet all three criteria below:
- none of your twelve interview scores can be 1/5
- no more than two of your 12 interview scores can be 2/5
- your RIS must be 36 or above
If you meet all three requirements, your application will be assessed as appointable, and can progress to be considered for post offers.
However, if you fail to meet any of these requirements, your application must then be assessed as not appointable, and it will progress no further in that round.
Total score
After interview, a weighting is applied to the scores in each area.
These scores are then combined to give your total score, which determines your ranking which will in turn be used to inform how offers are made. The weighting of different sections, as well as the method by which your total score is established, is detailed in the table below.
|
|
Interviewer 1 |
Interviewer 2 |
Weighting |
Max score
|
|||
|
Station 1 |
|||||||
|
Clinical scenario 1 |
/ 5 |
/ 5 |
x1.2 |
/ 12 |
|||
|
Clinical scenario 2 |
/ 5 |
/ 5 |
x1.6 |
/ 16 |
|||
|
Communication mark |
/ 5 |
/ 5 |
x1.2 |
/ 12 |
|||
|
Station 2 |
|||||||
|
Ethical, professionalism and governance scenario |
/ 5 |
/ 5 |
x1.6 |
/ 16 |
|||
|
Medical registrar suitability |
/ 5 |
/ 5 |
x1.6 |
/ 16 |
|||
|
Communication mark |
/ 5 |
/ 5 |
x0.8 |
/ 8 |
|||
|
|
|||||||
|
Raw interview score |
/ 60 |
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
Interview score (w weighting) |
/ 80 |
||||||
|
Application score |
/ 40 |
x0.5 |
20 |
||||
|
|
|||||||
|
Total score |
/ 100 |
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