Dentistry Interview Questions Dr R.3 Flashcards
What do you consider your greatest strength?
a. Building relationships
b. I have come across people of all ages, backgrounds, challenging customers, conflict in a work setting etc
c. I have learned to understand someone’s needs through active listening (give example)
d. My communication has massively improved
Through volunteering, working, and shadowing, I have become familiar with those around me.
e. Communication has helped me to find connections with others in my team and develop an understanding of the group’s strengths weaknesses. I appreciate we are all unique and have our own challenges and am willing to help one another achieve our goals. I hope to continue building on this in a clinical setting to treat patients ethically, respecting their dignity, and treating for them in their best interests.
What do you consider your greatest weakness?
a. Aiming for perfection
b. As someone who is very ambitious, I am always trying to do my best in everything, whether that is academically, or in my rugby tournaments
c. This comes as a strength but is also my greatest weakness
d. In dentistry, perfection cannot always be achieved
Sometimes a deep filling will lead to the tooth dying, that is something that you could not have avoided
e. Aiming for perfection takes time, a lot of work, and can be mentally draining
f. I have learned to overcome this by using positive psychology. Positive affirmations
g. I have done the best I could and I reflect on the good and bad aspects of my work
h. I seek feedback from those with more experience and this helps me to view the situation holistically
Saying no
a. I am always looking to help others and find it difficult to say no when I am asked to do something to help someone else
b. Others around me can take advantage of this and that can be my downfall
c. I am always willing to help others even if it involves going out of my way to help someone else
d. This can be time-consuming and means that I am putting myself second
e. This isn’t ideal when I am busy and can risk me becoming overwhelmed
f. I feel guilty by refusing to do something and often find myself being the one doing the most in group projects and within a team
g. So far, I have learned to work on this through being more confident about my ability
h. And also understand that I also have a limit and I need to prioritise the important tasks at hand.
i. The skill of saying no, and knowing my limit is something I have been working on in the last few years during my volunteering and time at co-op. I hope to continue working on this as a student.
How have you developed your teamwork, use past experiences to explain.
a. Give an example, sports team is always a really good point, or working in the super market. Make your point about how you developed teamwork through the experience, use evidence to back your point, reflect on how this improved your teamwork and how it is relevant to dentistry
b. As a rugby player I was on the school’s sports team for a number of year. I was relatively young when I first joined but I slowly integrated within the team and learned how to identify strengths and weaknesses in our group. We worked together to share our tactics and functioned as a unit during matches and big tournaments.
c. Working together improved my teamwork, we strategized together, created game plans and through trial and error we succeeded as a team. We found what worked for us and kept building on that. It helped to remind everyone of our shared goals and train together to highlight our weaknesses.
d. One memorable tournament involved us working together to achieve xyz, I felt I really helped here because I created the strategy which the others built upon
e. I realise how relevant this is to dentistry, I saw the same teamwork during my work exp. The whole team had different roles but managed to work closely from the moment the patient walked in, to treatment, to paying the charge. I also noticed the teamwork between the lab technician while I shadowed there.
What do you see as the greatest problem facing the NHS today?
a. Give an example, use an article or some research to back up your point, explain why this is an issue and the implications of this. How will this impact you in the future and what can be done to overcome it
a. Access to care is an issue
b. Areas that are deprived often have poorer dental health and higher needs- lack oral hygiene education and have high sugar diets
c. Those who need the most care struggle to access it or afford it
d. Underserved communities don’t have enough oral health education
e. Challenging this problem brings numerous issues, financial costs, need for greater access, government funding needs to be increased. Who will pay for the treatment? Is it fair that they are forced to go for an extraction rather than root canal due to cost?
f. There will be an increasing disparity between those who can afford care and those who can’t. Losing teeth has proven to have a negative impact on oral-health relates quality of life.
What are you looking for in dental school?
a. Having seen the contrast between NHS, a private clinic, as well as insight into dental lab work, I recognise there are similarities between every university course. What would make a university stand out is their delivery of education. I’m looking to learn how to provide ethical dentistry and build my critical thinking skills to handle complex and challenging cases through teamwork.
b. Therefore, I hope to learn at a university where I can gain comprehensive knowledge.
c. I want to gain experience managing patients of all backgrounds, high needs, those within the community or who have been referred for treatment. I believe this would really help me to become all-rounded dentist.
d. As a practical learner I hope to gain early clinical exposure.
e. Supervisors are happy to provide constructive criticism, I’m here to learn and any feedback would be appreciated.
Overall a supportive community would be a bonus.
Tell me about a conflict that arose between you and a supervisor or peer, and how you handled it.
a. Talk about a conflict during a group project, DofE, or employment.
b. Explain what happened?
Why had it happened?
How did you handle it?
How would you avoid the situation in the future?
How can you work on yourself to prevent this reoccurring?
In hindsight could you have handled it better?
Achieve a win at the semi-finals.
Tell me about an experience you’ve had working in a team. What role do you tend to play when working on a team?
a. During my time on a rugby team, we had a challenging match ahead of us. We had a conflict arise between a couple of team members who felt different strategies would work.
b. The situation was escalating so I tried to offer my help
I could see that things were getting heated and this would impact our play
c. I tried to improve the situation by finding a quiet area to speak to each separately
d. From speaking to both people separately I realised the main issue rooted from both of them feeling strongly about what would help us to win. I reminded both that each of us felt the same exact way, we shared a common goal and that was to win the match. I offered we try both strategies in a couple of practices and go with the majority vote.
e. Reiterating our common goals, boosting team morale, and having some time apart made a big difference.
f. Reflection.
