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Say your answer out loud first, then jot down the key points you made. Writing it helps you spot gaps — and it's what the AI feedback reads.
0 words
Conflict resolution, respectful communication, openness to being wrong, and focus on shared goals.
A structure to build your own answer on — not a script.
Situation
The disagreement and why it mattered.
Understand their view
How you listened and sought their reasoning.
Find common ground
Shared goal; compromise or evidence.
Outcome and learning
What happened, what you learned; link to clinical teams and escalation.
A strong but not perfect answer. Read the notes to see why it works — then make your own version with your experiences.
In my EPQ group — we'd each written a section of a shared report on antibiotic resistance — another student wanted to include a statistic from a news article I thought was unreliable. She felt strongly it made the introduction more powerful, and our first conversation got quite tense.
I realised I'd started by telling her she was wrong1 rather than asking why she'd chosen it. So I suggested we look at the source together2. It turned out the article was quoting a real report, but the figure had been rounded and applied to the wrong year. We agreed to use the original report and her framing, which kept the impact she wanted with accurate data.
What I learned is that disagreement goes better when you focus on the shared goal — for us, a good, accurate report — rather than on who's right. It also taught me to lead with a question rather than a verdict3.
In medicine, I know disagreements affect patients. If I disagreed with a senior about a patient's care, I'd raise it respectfully and ask about their reasoning — they may know something I don't. But if I still had a genuine concern about patient safety, I'd have a duty to escalate4 it through the appropriate route.
Real interviews are won and lost here. Answer each one aloud.