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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
Empathy, emotional maturity and the ability to reflect on a human encounter while maintaining confidentiality.
A structure to build your own answer on — not a script.
Introduce the person anonymously
Enough detail to make them real, nothing identifiable.
What happened and what you noticed
Focus on the human side as well as the medical.
Feelings
How it affected you — honestly.
Meaning
What it taught you about patients, illness, care or yourself.
A strong but not perfect answer. Read the notes to see why it works — then make your own version with your experiences.
On my hospice placement I met a man in his sixties who'd been a carpenter. He was very frail, but every day he asked for the window to be opened1 so he could hear the builders on the site next door.
What stayed with me was a conversation I overheard between him and one of the palliative care doctors. He asked whether he'd be able to go home. She didn't say yes or no immediately — she asked him what 'home' would mean to him2 and what he was hoping for. It turned out he mostly wanted to see his workshop once more. The team arranged for his son to bring photos and some of his tools in, and he talked about them for days.
I felt sad, because it was clear he wasn't going to get better, but I also felt something I didn't expect3, which was that his last weeks had real meaning because people had listened to what mattered to him.
It changed how I think about the goal of medicine4. I used to see it as curing people, but that doctor was treating him skilfully without any possibility of cure — by finding out what mattered and working towards that.
Real interviews are won and lost here. Answer each one aloud.