Questions to Ask a Nurse for a School Project
Fifty questions for a student who has to interview a nurse for a school project, a careers assignment or a health class report. They are the questions to ask nurses about their job that a textbook cannot answer, sorted in the order an interview tends to go: the daily work, the route into nursing, the hard parts, the best parts, the bigger picture and advice for someone your age. Pick ten or twelve, because a nurse on a break rarely has time for more.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
The job
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, so this goes first. Knowing the specialty stops the rest of the interview producing answers that are true in general and wrong for the person sitting in front of you.
Where do you work, and how is it different from the other places a nurse can work?
Why ask it
A hospital ward, a school, a clinic, a care home and a patient's own house are all nursing workplaces, and the days look nothing alike. If your nurse has worked in more than one, ask for the comparison: it makes a ready-made section for your project.
What do you actually do in the first hour of a shift?
Why ask it
Concrete and easy to answer, so it settles both of you before the harder questions. On a hospital ward the answer might be handover, reading charts and meeting each patient; in a school or a clinic it will be something else, and that detail is what a job description leaves out.
How long is a shift, and how many do you work in a row?
Why ask it
Shift patterns differ by employer and by setting: some nurses work eight hours, some twelve, some a run of nights with days off after. Whatever the pattern is, it shapes the whole week, so follow up on sleep if you want the candid version.
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. The follow-up is what that number becomes on a short-staffed day.
What are the three things you do most often in a shift?
Why ask it
Asking for three keeps the answer short enough to write down and gives you a list you can turn into a chart or a poster panel. Expect ordinary things such as giving medicines, checking temperature and blood pressure, and explaining what happens next.
How much of your shift goes on writing notes or using a computer?
Why ask it
Record keeping is the part of the job students least expect, and nurses tend to have views on it. The why matters more than the how much: notes are how the next person on shift knows what has already been done.
Who else is around you on a shift, and who do you rely on most?
Why ask it
The usual picture is one nurse and one patient. In practice the work is done in teams that can include healthcare assistants, porters, pharmacists and cleaners, and the person named as most relied upon is often not who you would guess.
What can a nurse do that a doctor does not, and the other way round?
Why ask it
Students often picture nurses as helpers to doctors, and this lets the nurse describe the two jobs as different work. What a nurse may decide or prescribe depends on the country and on extra qualifications, so write down how it works where they are.
What do you carry or use every day at work, and which piece of equipment took longest to learn?
Why ask it
Objects are easy to describe and easy to draw, which suits a poster or a younger student's project. The reason behind each item, often safety or hygiene, is the fact to write down, and the second half tends to bring out a story from their early days.
What is a skill you use every day that someone outside the job would never think of?
Why ask it
This is how you reach the parts of the work nobody can see: noticing that a patient has gone quiet, timing a difficult conversation, working out what a frightened person is not saying.
How do you decide who needs you first when three people need you at once?
Why ask it
Deciding who comes first is thinking work, and it rarely shows from the outside. Get the reasoning step by step, what they check and what can wait, and you can set it out as a numbered list.
What happens when your shift ends and the next nurse takes over?
Why ask it
Handover is the moment when everything one nurse knows about a patient has to reach another. What gets said, and what could go wrong if something were left out, makes a clear example of why talking counts as a nursing skill.
Career path
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.
How old were you when you first thought about nursing, and what put the idea in your head?
Why ask it
Some nurses decided as small children and some came to it after another career. Either story is useful in a careers project, because it tells readers your age that the decision does not have to be made yet.
What did you have to study, and how long did it take?
Why ask it
Routes into nursing differ by country and by decade. Someone who qualified twenty years ago may describe a path that no longer exists, so note where and when they trained and look up the current route separately.
Which school subjects turned out to matter most in your work?
Why ask it
Science is the expected answer, so listen for the others: maths for working out doses, writing for patient notes, languages or drama for talking to strangers. It ties the interview to your own timetable.
Was there a part of your training you found harder than you expected?
Why ask it
A list of modules is something you can find online; what was hard is not. Often it is not the science at all but the first placement, the first mistake or simply the pace.
What was it like the first time you looked after a real patient?
Why ask it
Most nurses remember this, often down to what they were asked to do that day. Quote it in their words instead of summarising, since it is the human moment in the training part of your project.
Did you have to pass an exam or register before you could work as a nurse, and how does that work where you are?
Why ask it
Most places require a nurse to be licensed or registered, but the exam, the body that runs it and how often it is renewed differ from country to country. Take down the name of the organisation so you can look up the current rules yourself.
What was your first year as a qualified nurse like?
Why ask it
The step from student to the person responsible is a big one, and nurses tend to describe it frankly. A good follow-up is who helped them through it, which often comes down to one colleague and makes a short story of its own.
How did you end up in the area of nursing you work in now?
Why ask it
Specialties are not always chosen on purpose. Listen for the placement they liked, the job that happened to be open or the area they tried and left, and you have the middle of their career story, the part between qualifying and now.
Do you still have to study or train now that you are qualified?
Why ask it
Many students assume the learning stops at graduation. Yearly refreshers, specialty courses and the hours some regulators ask nurses to log all count here, and the best detail is which recent course changed how they work.
What other jobs can a nurse move into later on?
Why ask it
The list is longer than people think: specialist nurse, teacher, manager, researcher, school nurse, and in some systems nurse practitioner. Which one they have considered themselves is the personal half of the answer.
Hard parts
What is the hardest part of the job that is not medical?
Why ask it
The answer is often about the system and not the patients: paperwork, short staffing, a slow computer, telling a family there is no bed. It is what stops a school project reading like a careers leaflet.
What happens when someone makes a mistake?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly, and about the workplace rather than about them. You are after how a mistake gets reported and what follows, which shows whether errors there are treated as something to learn from or something to punish.
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 in a healthcare team. A useful answer names what they do, such as raising it with a senior nurse or writing the concern down, and not only that everyone respects each other.
How do you stay calm when something goes wrong quickly?
Why ask it
Many nurses credit training and repetition more than a calm personality. What they physically do in the first few seconds, such as calling for help or checking the same things in the same order, is the description to quote.
How do you talk to a patient's family when the news is bad?
Why ask it
Sensitive but askable. Whether the nurse gives the news or stays with the family after a doctor has depends on the workplace, so find out which it is for them. Sitting down, plain words and leaving a silence are the kind of detail to listen for.
What do you do when a patient is frightened, angry or does not want your help?
Why ask it
Keep it general so that no real patient has to be described. The techniques nurses name, such as lowering their voice, sitting at eye level or coming back later, are things a reader can picture and even try.
How do you protect yourself from getting ill or hurt at work?
Why ask it
Hand washing, gloves, vaccinations and safe ways to lift and move people all belong here. It shows that nurses look after their own bodies as part of the job, and it makes a practical section most classmates will not have.
What does working nights, weekends and holidays do to the rest of your life?
Why ask it
A hospital never closes, so somebody is on the ward on every birthday and public holiday, while a school or clinic nurse may keep office hours. How much say a nurse gets in the rota varies between employers, so ask how it works for them and how their family plans around it.
What do you do after a hard shift?
Why ask it
The answers here are small and honest: a long drive home, a call to a colleague, or an admission that nothing much works. It lets you end the difficult section on the person and not the problem.
Has there been a time you thought about leaving nursing, and what made you stay?
Why ask it
Save this for when the conversation is going well, and say they are free to skip it. A nurse who does answer puts the bad and the good of the job in one story, which is a fairer picture than either half alone.
Best parts
What is the best part of your job?
Why ask it
Simple on purpose. After a run of difficult questions it changes the mood, and the answer is often smaller than students expect: a patient walking out of the door, a joke at three in the morning, a family saying thank you.
Can you describe a day you went home proud of?
Why ask it
Asking for one day gets a story with a beginning and an end, which is far easier to write up than a general feeling. Remind them to leave out names and anything else that could identify the patient.
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. If the nurse would rather not answer, accept that and move on without a follow-up.
What makes you laugh at work?
Why ask it
Humour is how many teams get through long shifts, and nurses are usually glad to be asked about it. One funny, harmless story will make a class presentation easier to remember than three serious ones.
What have your patients taught you?
Why ask it
This turns the usual direction around, since most of your questions treat the nurse as the one with the knowledge. Replies are often about patience, or about how differently people face being ill.
Big picture
What is something people get wrong about nursing?
Why ask it
It lets someone correct a thing they are tired of hearing, which is why the answer is usually quotable. Common themes are how much nurses decide for themselves and how technical the work is.
Has anything about nursing changed since you started?
Why ask it
A then-and-now comparison gives your project a sense of time without asking anyone to guess at the future. The changes named tend to be specific enough to check, such as paper charts giving way to electronic records or a piece of equipment that did not exist when they trained.
If you could change one thing about how nurses work, what would it be?
Why ask it
Limiting it to one thing forces a choice, and the choice shows what this nurse cares about most: more staff, less paperwork, more time with each patient. Present it in your write-up as their opinion, not as a fact about all nurses.
Is it hard to find enough nurses where you work, and what do you think would help?
Why ask it
Nurse shortages are in the news in many countries, and this lets you put a local voice next to a headline. Check any number you are given against an official source before it goes in your project.
What is something small a patient or visitor can do that makes your shift easier?
Why ask it
Readers can use this answer the next time they sit in a waiting room or visit a relative, and it fits a 'tips from a nurse' box on a poster or slide. It also balances a project that would otherwise be only about what nurses do for other people.
Advice
Think of the best nurse you have worked with: what made them good?
Why ask it
Asked in the abstract, the qualities of a good nurse come back as a list of adjectives. A real colleague, who can stay unnamed, brings out what that person actually did.
Would you recommend nursing, and to what sort of person?
Why ask it
A general recommendation is easy to give. Naming the kind of person the work suits takes judgment, and it is the half a reader weighing up the career will actually use.
What could someone my age do now to find out whether nursing would suit them?
Why ask it
This is the question that makes the interview useful to you and not only to your teacher. Volunteering, first aid courses, work experience weeks and open days all have age limits that differ by place, so ask what is open to you locally.
What would you tell yourself on your first day as a nurse?
Why ask it
Advice aimed at a younger self comes out more candid than advice aimed at a stranger. It often makes the closing line of a project, so write it down word for word.
Is there a book, film or programme that shows nursing the way it really is?
Why ask it
Television hospitals are most people's picture of the job, and nurses enjoy saying what the dramas get wrong. A recommendation also hands you a second source to list beside the interview.
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
Start with a nurse you can reach
The school nurse, a relative, a neighbour or a friend's parent is the usual route, and your teacher may know someone. If you have to approach a hospital or clinic cold, write to its main office or public contact address and not to a ward. Either way, say who you are, what the project is for, how much time you need and when it is due.
Send your questions in advance
Shift work makes a fixed time hard to promise, so offer the choice of answering in writing. Questions sent ahead also get longer answers, because the nurse can think about them away from work.
Choose ten or twelve across the groups
Fifty questions is several interviews' worth. For a twenty-minute slot, take three or four from The job, two from Career path, two from Hard parts and one each from Best parts, Big picture and Advice, then check the choice against what your assignment sheet asks for. A careers project leans on Career path and Advice, a health or citizenship project on Hard parts and Big picture. Mark two as spares in case an answer is short.
Agree the limits before you start
Say at the outset that you will not ask about identifiable patients and will not record without permission. If the interview is with someone you do not know, tell your teacher or a parent when and how it is happening.
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
Typical pay, entry requirements and licensing rules are published for most countries, so look them up. Use the interview for the personal version: how this nurse got in, what it took and what they would do differently.
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.