Questions to Ask in an OB/GYN Residency Interview
For fourth-year medical students interviewing for obstetrics and gynecology residency, with questions to put to the program director, the faculty and the residents. The groups follow the work itself: the labor floor, the operating room, family planning and abortion training, fellowship and careers, then autonomy and wellbeing. The list assumes the US match, and anything that turns on a state's law, a hospital's policy or the accrediting body's rules is written as something to ask about at that program, because it differs and it changes.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Labor and delivery
How many vaginal deliveries and cesarean sections does a resident log by graduation?
Why ask it
Minimum case numbers for the specialty are published and get revised, so check the current ones before the day and ask how far past them the last class finished. The resident with the fewest tells you more than the average does. A program sitting just above the line has no room for a quiet year or an extra resident.
Who else delivers babies here besides the OB/GYN residents: midwives, family medicine residents, private attendings?
Why ask it
Every other pair of hands on the labor floor takes a share of the births. That is not always a loss, since a good midwife service is where many residents learn normal labor best. The follow-up is how patients are divided when they arrive, and whether residents are welcome at midwife deliveries.
How is labor and delivery covered overnight: night float, 24-hour call or a mix, and in which years?
Why ask it
Get the count for each year of training: weeks of nights, plus the weekend calls that sit on top of them. The makeup of the night team matters as much, since two residents and an attending on a busy unit is a different job from four. The junior on nights is the one to hear it from.
How much high-risk obstetrics comes through here: very preterm labor, placenta accreta, mothers with heart disease?
Why ask it
A referral hospital receives these patients and a community hospital sends them on. Ask which patients are transferred out and where they go, and what level of newborn intensive care is in the building, since that largely sets how early a baby can be delivered here. On the antepartum service, check whether the resident or a fellow writes the plan.
How many forceps and vacuum deliveries does a typical resident do?
Why ask it
This skill passes from hand to hand, so it lasts only where attendings still use the instruments and will let a resident hold them. Ask a chief for their own number and whether they would do one alone. If the count is low, find out what simulation fills in.
At what point in a delivery does the attending come into the room, and who has their hands on the baby?
Why ask it
When an attending must be present is usually a matter of hospital policy and billing rules, so ask how it works on this unit. What you are trying to learn is the feel of it: an attending standing gowned at the resident's shoulder, or one who takes over when things get interesting. Residents will describe it more plainly than faculty.
Is the number of births at this hospital going up or down, and what is behind it?
Why ask it
A labor unit closing nearby can send a wave of patients here, and a new one opening across town can draw them away. Either moves a resident's numbers within a class or two, so get the yearly totals for the last few years and ask whether any site in the program plans to open, expand or shut its unit.
Who sees patients in obstetric triage, and how soon does an intern do it without someone beside them?
Why ask it
Triage teaches the judgment calls: who is in labor, who can go home, whose headache is not just a headache. If midwives or nurse practitioners staff it during the day, residents may meet it mainly at night. Ask an intern how many patients they saw there on their last shift.
How are residents drilled for hemorrhage, shoulder dystocia, eclampsia and cord prolapse?
Why ask it
These arrive without warning and not often enough to learn by waiting. The details to get are how often drills run, whether they happen on the real unit with the nurses and the anesthesia team, and whether a resident leads. A single simulation day at orientation is a thin answer.
Do residents here deliver twins and breech babies vaginally and perform external cephalic version, or do those nearly always go to cesarean?
Why ask it
Practice differs from hospital to hospital and from one attending to the next. Where the answer is 'rarely', the program is hardly alone, but ask what a graduate would do faced with an unplanned breech and no backup. A real answer mentions a simulation and a faculty member who teaches it.
How much ultrasound do residents perform themselves, and who checks their images?
Why ask it
A quick scan for position, fluid or a heartbeat is everyday work on the labor floor, and a full anatomy survey or an early pregnancy scan in the emergency department is a separate skill. The setup to hope for is an ultrasound rotation where a sonographer or a maternal-fetal medicine attending goes over the pictures. Where sonographers do every scan by day, residents learn at night with nobody reviewing.
Which communities does this labor floor serve, and what has the department done about unequal outcomes for mothers?
Why ask it
Look for things you could go and see: severe complications reviewed with residents in the room, a standing protocol for hemorrhage or high blood pressure, interpreters on the labor floor at night, a clinic that sees patients soon after they go home. A resident who has presented at one of those reviews shows it is taught and not only stated.
Surgery
How many hysterectomies does a resident finish with, and how do they divide between vaginal, laparoscopic, robotic and open?
Why ask it
A healthy total can hide one thin route. Ask for the split in the last graduating class, and for the vaginal number in particular, because it depends on having attendings who still choose that approach and teach it. If one route is mostly simulated, it is better to know before you rank.
When a fellow is scrubbed on a case, which parts are the resident's?
Why ask it
Oncology, urogynecology and minimally invasive surgery fellows need the same operations the chiefs do. Some services settle it with a rule, such as the resident doing one side or the fellow teaching through the case, and some leave it to the day. Ask a chief how many cases on those services they did from the first incision to the last stitch.
Which operations belong to which year, and what is an intern doing in the operating room?
Why ask it
Some programs keep the first year almost entirely on obstetrics, and others have interns doing hysteroscopies, uterine evacuations and tubal ligations within months. A ladder that is written down, with cases assigned by year, protects juniors from being bumped. 'Whoever is free' usually means the senior takes it.
What do residents have to show in the simulation lab before they operate laparoscopically on a patient?
Why ask it
Look for a curriculum with set tasks, an hour in the week to practice and someone who signs off, not just a box trainer in a locked room. Certification can carry its own laparoscopic skills test, so ask what the board requires of your class and when residents here usually finish it.
On robotic cases, do residents sit at the console, and from which year?
Why ask it
Standing at the bedside changing instruments is not operating. A dual console helps, and so does a chief who can say how many cases they did as the console surgeon. Find out too whether the robot has crowded out straight laparoscopy or vaginal surgery, which graduates heading to a hospital without one will need.
Do residents see their surgical patients in clinic before the operation and again afterward?
Why ask it
Choosing who needs surgery, and which operation, is harder to learn than the steps. Where patients come from private offices and appear on the schedule already booked, the resident learns the hysterectomy and misses the decision. A preoperative clinic is one good sign, and another is the resident being the person who takes the phone call when a patient has a complication at home.
Which office procedures do residents do week in, week out: colposcopy, LEEP, office hysteroscopy, endometrial biopsy, IUDs and implants?
Why ask it
A generalist spends more days in the office than in the operating room, so these counts matter as much as the big cases. A dedicated procedure or colposcopy clinic, with every resident in it on a regular rotation, is what makes the counts add up. Office hysteroscopy is worth asking about by name, since not every clinic owns the equipment.
Who takes the gynecology consults from the emergency department, and who operates on the ectopic pregnancy at 2 a.m.?
Why ask it
Ectopic pregnancy, ovarian torsion and heavy bleeding are the emergencies a generalist handles alone later. Ask whether the night resident goes to the operating room with the attending or hands the patient to a day team. An intern's account of their last consult shift is the quickest way to hear how busy it gets.
If a resident is short on one type of case going into the final year, what does the program do about it?
Why ask it
Someone has to be reading the case logs for this to have an answer. Good ones include a rotation moved, a month at another site or first call on that kind of case. If the director says it has never come up, ask a chief the same thing.
Family planning
How does this state's current law shape what residents are trained to do in abortion care?
Why ask it
Laws differ by state and have been changing, so ask how things stand this year and do not assume from a map. A prepared director answers in specifics: what is taught on site, what is taught elsewhere and what changed in the schedule. Vague reassurance is itself an answer.
Is abortion training on the block schedule for everyone with a way to opt out, or does a resident have to request it?
Why ask it
The accreditation requirements speak to access to this training, so read the current wording before the interview and ask how the program meets it. A rotation that sits on the schedule comes with protected time and coverage. One you must arrange yourself tends to lose out to the labor floor.
If residents travel to another state for this training, who arranges it, who pays and how long are they away?
Why ask it
The details decide whether it really happens: housing, travel money, a training license in the other state, liability coverage while there, and who does your nights at home. Ask how many residents went last year, whether anyone who wanted to go could not, and roughly how many procedures people came back with.
Where do residents learn uterine evacuation for miscarriage, in the office and in the operating room?
Why ask it
Every OB/GYN manages early pregnancy loss, whatever their own position on abortion, and the hands-on skills overlap. Manual vacuum aspiration in clinic or the emergency department is one thing to check, and procedures later in pregnancy, which are harder to come by, are another. Counts from a third-year are better than 'plenty'.
When a pregnancy complication falls in a legal gray area, such as the water breaking long before viability, who does the resident call?
Why ask it
You want a name and a phone number that works at 3 a.m.: the attending first, then an ethics or legal contact the hospital has set up. Ask residents whether they have ever waited on that call with a patient getting sicker, and how the department backed them. Nobody on interview day can tell you what the law permits, so ask instead how the hospital has told its doctors to proceed.
Does any hospital in the program limit contraception, sterilization or other reproductive care by its own policy?
Why ask it
A hospital's affiliation can restrict care that the state allows, and it may apply at one site and not another. Tubal ligation at cesarean is the usual example, so find out which procedures are affected and where residents go to learn them. The block schedule should show that time.
How do residents learn the full range of contraception, including IUDs and implants placed right after delivery?
Why ask it
Counseling and placing devices in clinic is the baseline. The less even parts are placement straight after birth, sterilization on the labor floor and methods for patients with serious medical conditions. Ask whether the postpartum unit keeps devices in stock, which is often what decides it.
Is there a complex family planning division, a fellowship or a Ryan program rotation, and what does a resident do on that service?
Why ask it
A Ryan program is a family planning rotation set up with support from a national training initiative, and applicants ask about it by name. With or without one, find out who teaches the rotation and whether that person is staying. Where a fellow is present, the question is who does the procedure and who watches.
How is it handled when a resident chooses not to take part in abortion care?
Why ask it
A fair question whichever way you lean, because it shows how the residents treat one another. Listen for two things: the resident who opts out still learns counseling, referral and how to manage complications, and nobody is quietly resented over coverage. Ask a resident, not only the director.
Have any faculty left, or been hard to recruit, because of the state's laws on reproductive care?
Why ask it
Put this to the director gently and to residents directly. Losing a maternal-fetal medicine or family planning attending changes what is taught within a year. A program in any state can have a good answer: who was hired, which partnerships were built, what residents were told.
Fellowship and careers
How many weeks do residents spend on gynecologic oncology, urogynecology, reproductive endocrinology and maternal-fetal medicine, and in which years?
Why ask it
The year matters as much as the length. Fellowship applications are due well before residency ends, so a first rotation in the final year comes too late for a letter. Check the application calendar for your field, then see whether the schedule gives you that service by the second year.
Which subspecialties have fellows here, and which do not?
Why ask it
A fellowship means faculty, research and someone a few years ahead to learn from, and it also means competition for the complicated cases. In a division with no fellow, a chief may be first assistant on operations that elsewhere go to a trainee above them. Decide which trade suits your plans before you compare programs.
What does a resident do on the reproductive endocrinology rotation?
Why ask it
Fertility practices are often private offices where a resident can spend a month watching. Ask whether residents see new patients, do the ultrasounds and attend egg retrievals, or sit in a corner of the office. If you are drawn to the field, ask who wrote the letters for the last resident who applied.
Where have graduates matched for fellowship over the last five years, field by field?
Why ask it
Ask how many applied in each field as well as how many matched, since a list shows only the successes. One match in your field several years ago is weaker evidence than a steady one every other year. Then ask to speak with the most recent resident who went that way.
What do graduates who go straight into practice end up doing: private groups, hospital-employed jobs, laborist work, academic generalist positions?
Why ask it
The spread of jobs shows what the program is built to produce. Where nearly everyone goes on to fellowship, ask who mentors a future generalist and whether the surgical numbers hold up for someone who will get no further training. Where nearly everyone goes into practice, ask the reverse.
Is there elective time, and can a senior resident shape the final year toward general practice or a subspecialty?
Why ask it
Some programs let seniors weight the last year or two toward a planned career, sometimes under the name of tracking, and some keep one schedule for everyone. Find out what the last class did with the time, whether an away or global health elective has been approved, and who covered the service meanwhile.
Where are residents taught menopause care, pediatric and adolescent gynecology, chronic pelvic pain and breast problems?
Why ask it
Patients bring these to a general OB/GYN every week, and a hospital-heavy schedule can leave them to chance. A named clinic or a faculty member who owns the topic is the answer to hope for. 'It comes up in continuity clinic' usually means it depends on who walks in.
What does the research requirement amount to, and is there a block reserved for it?
Why ask it
It can be anything from a quality improvement project to a study presented at a resident research day. What last year's chiefs presented shows the range, and so does whether there is help with statistics and whether the reserved block survives when the labor floor is short of people. For a competitive fellowship, ask when residents usually have a project under way.
How do residents here do on the in-training exam and on the board's written exam at the first attempt?
Why ask it
One year's figure is not enough, because in a small program one person moves the percentage a long way. Certification in this specialty has more than one stage, so ask how the board's process runs now and whether the program helps graduates prepare for the later part. Weekly teaching that residents can leave the floor for is what sits behind the number.
Autonomy
What does a chief resident do here that a third-year does not?
Why ask it
Good answers are concrete: runs the labor board, books and performs their own cases, takes juniors through operations, decides who goes to the operating room at night. If the final year sounds like the third with a longer list, independence is not being built on purpose.
Is there a resident-run gynecology service or chief clinic where residents book their own operations?
Why ask it
Here a resident owns the whole arc: the workup, the consent conversation, the operation and the complication. Ask who the attending of record is and how much they say during the case. Where every surgical patient belongs to a private attending, ask how chiefs get that experience.
In continuity clinic, do residents have their own patients, and are they called when one comes in to deliver or needs surgery?
Why ask it
Following a pregnancy from the first visit to the birth is rarer in residency than applicants expect, because of how the rotations fall. Some programs page the resident or route the patient's surgery to their operating day. Ask a senior how many of their own clinic patients they have delivered or operated on.
How many cesareans has a chief here taken an intern through as the teaching surgeon?
Why ask it
Teaching a junior through a case, with the attending scrubbed and quiet, is the last step before doing it alone in practice. Programs differ on when it starts, and some allow it in the third year. A chief who cannot remember the last time has probably been the learner all the way through.
How much does a resident's role in the operating room depend on which attending is there that day?
Why ask it
Every department has attendings who hand over the knife and attendings who do not. The useful follow-up is whether there are shared expectations by year, and whether the generous teachers are the ones staffing the resident service. Ask for proportions, not names.
How do private attendings and their patients fit into resident training?
Why ask it
At hospitals with many private obstetricians, a resident may manage the labor and then step aside when the patient's own doctor arrives for the birth. Find out whether those deliveries and operations count as resident cases, and whether there is a separate service whose patients are the residents' own. The two can sit side by side and feel very different.
Could a graduate of this program take call alone at a small hospital the month after finishing?
Why ask it
It is the plainest test of an OB/GYN residency: a worrying fetal tracing, a hemorrhage and a ruptured ectopic, with no one else in the building who operates. Put it to the chiefs and ask which of those they would want more practice at. Their hesitation, or lack of it, is your answer.
Wellbeing
After a stillbirth, or a mother who nearly dies on the unit, who looks after the residents who were in the room?
Why ask it
Obstetrics can go from the happiest room in the hospital to the worst inside a few minutes, and interns meet that early. A real answer has steps: a debrief before the shift ends, someone who checks in the following week, coverage if a resident needs to step away. Ask a resident when it last happened and what was done.
What happens to the schedule when a resident is pregnant: nights, long operations, leave and the date of graduation?
Why ask it
You might expect a department of obstetricians to handle this well, and the only way to know is to ask someone who has been through it. Leave depends on the employer, the board and the law where you train, so ask for the written policy and whether time away extends training. Ask too about partners and adoptive parents, and about time to pump on operating days.
What time does the day start and end on gynecologic oncology and on labor and delivery nights?
Why ask it
These tend to be the heaviest stretches, so ask about them by name instead of asking for a typical week. An intern can tell you when they arrived to see patients before rounds and when they got home. Then ask whether a long week gets written down as one.
How do residents get along with the labor floor nurses and the midwives?
Why ask it
An experienced labor nurse has often read the tracing and the patient before the intern walks in, and can make that intern's year. Ask for a story about a nurse who taught a resident something, and how a disagreement over a tracing gets settled in the middle of the night. Eye-rolling in the answer is worth noting.
How is feedback given in the operating room, and what happens when it tips into humiliation?
Why ask it
Surgical teaching can be blunt and still be kind. Ask residents whether they are told what to fix after a case, and whether there is a way to raise a problem that does not pass through the attending concerned. An example of something that changed after a report is stronger than a policy.
What support is there when a resident is named in a lawsuit or pulled into a formal case review?
Why ask it
Obstetrics has a reputation for litigation, and a claim can surface long after the delivery. Liability coverage is arranged by the employer and its terms differ, so find out how it works here and whether it still applies once you have left. Chiefs can say who sat with the last resident who went through it: a faculty mentor, risk management, a peer group.
How many residents are in each class, and is that enough to staff the labor floor, the operating rooms and the clinic at once?
Why ask it
A class of four feels one absence far more than a class of ten. The telling detail is what gave way the last time someone was out for a month: clinic, an elective or other people's days off. If the program has grown or shrunk lately, check that the work followed the headcount.
Getting straight answers on an OB/GYN interview day
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the season starts
Look up what is published
The specialty's minimum case numbers and a program's accreditation status are public, and most programs post a block schedule. Read them first so your questions start where the website stops. 'I saw eight weeks of oncology in the second year. What does the resident do on that service?' gets further than asking how much oncology there is.
Choose six numbers to bring home
Adjectives do not compare across programs and numbers do. Pick a short set and collect it everywhere: deliveries and cesareans at graduation, hysterectomies by route, weeks of nights in each year, weeks of family planning training, residents per class and the number of fellows. Fill in one sheet per program the same evening, while you can still tell the labor floors apart.
Have a working guess about your career
You do not need to know whether you will be a generalist or apply for fellowship, but a guess sharpens the day. If you lean toward practice, weight the Surgery and Autonomy groups and ask who mentors generalists. If you lean toward a subspecialty, start with Fellowship and careers: when that rotation falls and who has matched in it lately.
Read the state's law for yourself
Know the outline of the law in the program's state, and in any state where its residents travel for training, before you ask anyone about it. It changes, and what you remember from the news may be out of date, so find a current source and then ask the program how things work in practice. Nobody you meet on the day is your legal reference, and this page is not one either.
Matching the question to the person
Interns and second-years
They live on the labor floor, so give them Labor and delivery: who delivers, what nights are like, how triage runs, how the nurses treat them. They also know whether interns get into the operating room or only hear about it.
Third-years and chiefs
They have the case logs. Ask for their own counts of vaginal hysterectomies, forceps deliveries and console cases, and put the question about taking call alone to them. One chief's number is worth more than a slide of class averages.
Faculty
Ask a faculty interviewer about their own division: what a resident does on their service, who gets the case when a fellow is scrubbed, what they hand over and in which year. A surgeon asked how they teach in the operating room will usually show you in the way they answer.
The program director
Keep for the director what only the director can answer: how the program meets the family planning requirement, where graduates went, what happens when a resident's case numbers run short, faculty turnover and class size. Short factual questions about leave and liability coverage can go to the coordinator by email.
The evening social or the video breakout
With no faculty present, residents answer more freely. It is the place for the Wellbeing group and for follow-ups to whatever the director said that morning. Residents may have a say in the rank list, so ask with the same care you would bring to the formal interviews.
Asking about abortion training
Frame it as training
Directors in this specialty hear the question every season. Asked the way you would ask about forceps or robotics, it is ordinary: what is on the schedule, where it happens, how many procedures residents finish with. You do not have to share your own position in order to ask.
Ask for the mechanics
'We are committed to full-scope training' is a statement of intent. The mechanics are the rotation's length, its site, who pays for travel and who works the resident's shifts at home. When a resident can describe their own weeks away, the arrangement is real.
Keep three things apart
State law, hospital policy and the views of individual faculty each limit training in a different way, and applicants tend to blur them. A hospital can restrict care by its own rules whatever the state allows, and a program in a restrictive state can run a solid partnership somewhere else. Ask about each one separately.
Whichever way you lean
An applicant who plans to opt out needs these answers as much as one who wants the most training available: how opting out works, what is still required and how colleagues take it. Asking the same plain questions at every program also lets you compare them on equal terms.
Where applicants go wrong
Asking only about obstetrics
Deliveries are the visible half of the specialty and the half a busy hospital rarely runs short of. Gynecologic surgery and office practice are where the gaps tend to hide, so spend at least as many questions there.
Accepting a total without the split
A hysterectomy count means little until you know the routes and who was the surgeon. The same goes for deliveries on a floor shared with midwives and other residents. Always ask the second question.
Judging a program by its state alone
The map shows the law and nothing about how a department has responded to it. Two programs in one state can offer very different training. Ask before you cross one off or assume another is fine.
Saving the hard questions for the director
Directors give the policy and residents give the practice. On hours, operating room culture and what follows a bad outcome, the residents' account is the one you would live in. If the two versions differ, write down both.