Canadian Medical Residency Training Programs' or CaRMS interviews are daunting, since candidates have become used to being assessed by via competency-based assessments and examinations for their medical knowledge, those kind of assessments or examinations are designed to check medical facts in the understanding of medical graduates.
On the other hand, CaRMS interviews are design to assess more than facts. In their core design, interview questions would probe facts, principles and attitudes. While facts are agreed-on true information, attitudes are subjective to the candidate, and it arise from value-sets the candidate has, thus a large number of interview questions will probe attitudes since it can be associated with how the candidate thinks in his/her day-to-day life and during situations requesting some decision-making. Principles, nevertheless, can be referred to as a set of standards which an individual can make decisions based-on.
It is worthwhile to keep in mind the following points while preparing for the interview:
- The interview is a conversation between yourself and the panel. It is not an oral examination. Since it is being conducted in a professional environment, it can should not be mistaken for a chat.
- You have a task: to show the panel that you should be part of their Medical Residency team.
- The interviewers are tasked with ranking candidates according to how they measure their suitability for their particular Medical Training Programs, and the interview score would constitute a large chunk of the final candidate's CaRMS application score.
On many occasions, candidates face questions which they are not sure what exactly probing. It is up to candidates whether to ask for clarification or go on answering the question based on their interpretations.
To answer confidently is to stick to the following advices:
- You make the interviewers' words mean what you want them to mean (beware of distorting their inquiry);
- For questions which explore your knowledge upon a topic or theme, you have command of the relevant facts;
- For questions which explore your judgement, you fashion your answer based on appropriate standards, and;
- For questions which explore your own opinion and your view on a situation, you feel comfortable about talking about yourself and especially your personal values.