Questions to Ask a Nurse for a School Project
Twenty questions a student can ask a nurse for a school project or careers assignment, along with how to arrange the interview and what to leave out. Written for the conversation itself rather than for background reading.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What do you actually do in the first hour of a shift?
Why ask it
Concrete and easy to answer, which makes it a good opener. It also hands you real detail for a write-up: handover, checking charts, counting controlled drugs, meeting patients. None of that appears in a job description.
How long is a shift, and how many do you work in a row?
Why ask it
The rota explains a great deal about the profession, including why twelve-hour patterns and night runs come up in every discussion of nurse retention. Ask how the pattern affects sleep if you want the candid version.
What kind of nurse are you, and what does that mean day to day?
Why ask it
Nursing is many different jobs sharing one title. Pinning down the specialty early stops the rest of the interview producing answers that are true in general and wrong for the person sitting in front of you.
What did you have to study, and how long did it take?
Why ask it
Worth asking because the routes differ by country and by decade. Someone who qualified twenty years ago describes a different path from a recent graduate, so note when they trained or your write-up will misdescribe the current route.
Was there a part of your training you found harder than you expected?
Why ask it
More revealing than asking what the training covered. The hard part is usually not the science but the first death, the first mistake, or simply the pace, and that is the part a reader remembers.
How many patients do you look after at once?
Why ask it
A number, which makes it quotable, and it swings hugely by setting: intensive care is not a nursing home. Ask what the number becomes on a short-staffed day, because that is the figure staff actually talk about.
What is something people get wrong about nursing?
Why ask it
Reliably produces the strongest quote in the interview, because it lets someone correct a thing they are tired of hearing. Answers often concern how much nurses decide independently, or how technical the work is.
Who else is around you on a shift, and who do you rely on most?
Why ask it
Nursing gets described as solitary and is done in teams, including healthcare assistants, porters, pharmacists and cleaners. Who gets named as most relied upon is frequently not who a student would guess.
When you disagree with a doctor about a patient, what do you do?
Why ask it
This is where you learn how authority actually works on a ward. Look for a described mechanism, escalating to a senior nurse or documenting the disagreement, rather than a general statement about mutual respect.
What is a skill you use every day that someone outside the job would never think of?
Why ask it
Draws out the invisible parts of the work: noticing that a patient has gone quiet, timing a difficult conversation, working out what a frightened person is not saying.
What happens when someone makes a mistake?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly and about the system rather than about them. What you want is incident reporting and what follows it, and the answer shows whether the workplace treats error as something to learn from or something to punish.
How do you decide who needs you first when three people need you at once?
Why ask it
Triage is the intellectual core of nursing and almost never discussed with students. The answer is a reasoning process, and getting it in detail will give you the best material in the project.
What is the hardest part of the job that is not medical?
Why ask it
The answer is nearly always structural: documentation, short staffing, a computer system, telling a family there is no bed. This is the question that stops a school project reading like a careers leaflet.
How do you talk to a patient's family when the news is bad?
Why ask it
Sensitive but askable, and most nurses have thought about it carefully. Concrete answers involve sitting down, using plain words and saying less than you would expect, which is the opposite of what people imagine.
What do you do after a hard shift?
Why ask it
Rounds out the picture with something human and tends to produce honest detail about recovery: a long drive home, a call to a colleague, or an admission that nothing much works.
Has anything about nursing changed since you started?
Why ask it
Gives your project a time dimension without asking anyone to speculate about the future. The changes named are usually specific and checkable, such as electronic records or new documentation requirements.
Without telling me anything private, is there a patient you still think about?
Why ask it
Naming the privacy limit yourself is what makes this askable, and it is the question most likely to produce something a reader remembers. If the nurse would rather not, accept that without a follow-up.
Why nursing rather than another job in healthcare?
Why ask it
Better than asking why they chose nursing, because the comparison forces a real answer instead of a sentence about wanting to help people. Replies often turn on patient contact, entry routes, or the shape of the training.
Would you recommend it, and to what sort of person?
Why ask it
The two halves work together. A general recommendation is easy to give. Naming the kind of person the work suits is where the judgment is, and it is the part a future reader will actually use.
Since I am writing this up, is there anything I should have asked and did not?
Why ask it
Closing here treats the nurse as a collaborator rather than a source, and experienced interviewees usually know exactly which important question got missed. Leave time for it instead of asking on your way out.
Interviewing a Nurse for a School Assignment
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting up the interview
Ask through a channel that exists
Hospitals and clinics have communications or education offices, and a request routed through one gets answered far more often than a message left on a ward. Say who you are, what the project is for, how much time you need, and when it is due.
Send your questions in advance
Nurses work shifts, and many will answer in writing between patients when a call is impossible. Sending questions ahead also gets you longer answers, because they can think about them away from the ward.
Agree the limits before you start
Say at the outset that you will not ask about identifiable patients and will not record without permission. That single sentence makes the rest of the conversation easier for both of you.
During the interview
- Record only with explicit permission, and take written notes even when you are recording.
- Put the factual questions first so the middle of the interview is free for the harder ones.
- When an answer is short, ask for an example rather than moving on. Most usable material comes from the second question, not the first.
- Read a quote back if you intend to use it, so it is accurate before you leave.
- Watch the clock and stop at the time you agreed, even mid-topic.
What to leave out
Anything that could identify a patient
A nurse cannot answer these and being asked puts them in an awkward position. Ask about types of situation instead, or invite them to tell you whatever they are able to.
Questions answerable with yes or no
Asking whether nursing is stressful gets you one word. Asking what made the last difficult shift difficult gets you a paragraph you can quote.
Anything you could look up
Pay bands, degree requirements and licensing rules are published. Spending interview time on them costs you the part that only this particular person can give you.
Leading questions
Asking whether nurses are underappreciated announces the answer you want. Ask what the public misunderstands and let them choose the frame themselves.
Writing it up
- 1Tidy your notes the same day, while you still remember the tone as well as the words.
- 2Keep what the nurse said and what you concluded visibly separate in the write-up.
- 3Check any figure you were given against a published source, since people misremember numbers in conversation.
- 4Send the quotes you plan to use if the project will be shared beyond your class.
- 5Thank them in writing and tell them how it went. It costs nothing and makes the next student's request easier to say yes to.