Interview Questions

Ask and ye shall receive!  Even though it's a couple weeks later...

In my last post, I mentioned that I had gone into my interview with a list of questions. I'll admit that I didn't come up with them all on my own...Google was my friend in that I searched for some questions to ask in an interview. I skimmed over the lists I found and picked some that I thought were relevant to my situation. And I didn't ask all of them, because most were covered when the interviewers were speaking. But I did get a chance to ask a few, a couple of which turned out to be "really good questions" in the words of the interview panel.

Here are some that I had prepared and asked:

• How do night shift and day shift differ as far as workload and keeping busy?
• What happens when census is low? Are L&D nurses floated?
• What is a typical day like on the unit?
• (asked to nurse manager) What is your management style?
• (asked to the 3 other panel members) How do you like working on the unit? Is it a good job, do people work together and get along for the most part?

So there you have it. Just 5 main questions, but apparently they were impressed with my interest based on the questions I asked.  It also helped that I was already familiar with the hospital and the mission/outlook/etc. and that I was able to give examples of what I had seen and liked/didn't like on other units as compared to the answers they provided about the L&D unit.

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On the job front...I'm now a quarter of the way through my orientation period (eeek!) and I am still loving it! I've learned *so* much the past 3 weeks on the unit! I'm able to do some basic stuff on my own (without direct supervision, but my preceptor or another nurse is always nearby in case I have a question or need help), I'm doing more charting, more interventions, interacting with the patients more. I'm starting to feel like an RN and not just a student...but I'm still a long ways off from being really comfortable doing stuff. That's completely normal and expected, though  :-)