Questions to Ask Residents
Questions to ask residents if you are a premed, a medical student on a rotation, or an applicant to their program. The residents here are resident physicians, doctors in training after medical school. Applicants will find what to ask residents during a residency interview, at the lunch or the social, and post-interview, when an email or a second look can settle what the day left open. The questions cover why they chose the specialty and the program, what a real day and a call night involve, how they are taught and supervised, what the program is like from the inside, life outside the hospital, and what they would tell someone a few years behind them.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Start Here
What year are you in, and what service are you on right now?
Why ask it
Year and rotation anchor everything else, because an intern on nights and a senior in clinic have almost nothing in common. It also stops you asking questions they are not yet in a position to answer.
Why did you come to this program, and would you come here again?
Why ask it
Location, a partner's job and how the Match fell are the usual reasons, and they describe the resident more than the place. The second question is about the place. Follow it by asking what they would look for if they were choosing today, and see whether this program has it.
What do you like most about training here?
Why ask it
'The people' is the stock answer, so ask for the last time a co-resident or an attending made a hard week easier. A resident who has to search for an example has told you as much as one who has three.
What does your day look like from the time you wake up?
Why ask it
Starting at the alarm clock gets you the commute, the pre-rounding and the hour they actually get home, none of which appears in a specialty description. Ask what fills the stretch between rounds and sign-out, the part of the day students rarely see.
How did you pick this specialty, and what were you deciding between?
Why ask it
The runner-up is more revealing than the choice, because it shows which trade mattered: continuity, procedures, hours, the patients. Ask when they decided, too. A resident who settled it in the last year of medical school is some comfort if you have not chosen yet.
What do you wish someone had told you before intern year?
Why ask it
Expect logistics more than medicine: how to place an order, call a consult, keep a list of patients straight. If it is something a student can practice, ask where they would start.
The Work
What do you spend time on that you did not expect to be part of the job?
Why ask it
Insurance approvals, discharge paperwork, calls to pharmacies and family updates are the usual answers. Ask who shares that load on their ward, a case manager, a pharmacist or nobody, because it differs from one hospital to the next and decides how much of the day is left for medicine.
How does call work on your service, and what was the last night like?
Why ask it
Night float, twenty-four hour shifts and home call are different lives, and one word covers all three. Ask what they were doing at three in the morning: admitting, covering other teams' patients, or sleeping with a pager on the pillow.
How many hours a week are you really working on this rotation?
Why ask it
Naming the rotation gets you a real count, while asking about hours in general gets the official figure. Then ask about their lightest month, since the spread between the two says more than an average. Hour limits and how they are logged differ by country and program, so ask how it works where they train.
How many patients are you carrying right now, and at what number do you stop learning from them?
Why ask it
Most residents can name the census where the day turns from medicine into triage. If today's number is above it, you have learned something about the service, and also that this is a poor moment for a long conversation.
How much of the day do you spend at a computer and not in a patient's room?
Why ask it
Students picture the bedside and residents describe the workstation. Ask which part of the charting they would hand off first: it separates the notes that help the next doctor from the ones nobody reads.
Which rotation were you dreading, and was it as bad as you had heard?
Why ask it
Reputations get passed down from class to class and are often a few years out of date. If the dreaded month turned out to be the one where they learned the most, ask what made it hard without making it miserable. The answer is usually a person, a senior or an attending, and worth remembering by name.
What did the nurses teach you in your first few months?
Why ask it
A resident with a ready answer has worked out who keeps the floor running at night. One who draws a blank, or bristles at the question, has described the relationship between the two groups without meaning to.
What do you say to a family when you do not have an answer yet?
Why ask it
Talking about uncertainty is learned mostly by watching someone do it well. Their actual phrasing is worth writing down, because you will need something to say in the same room one day.
What was the best day you have had at work this year?
Why ask it
Few people ask this on a ward, so expect a pause and then a story. The day they pick, whether a diagnosis nobody else caught, a delivery, or a patient walking out, shows what the job pays them in besides salary.
Teaching
How long was it before you felt useful?
Why ask it
The point where they stopped slowing the team down tends to stick in the memory, along with what changed: a senior who let them run the list, or the first night nobody rechecked their orders. A timeline counted in months, from someone plainly competent now, is a good thing to hear before your own first weeks.
What can you decide on your own now that you could not last year?
Why ask it
A good answer is one concrete thing: a procedure done unsupervised, a discharge they signed off, a resuscitation they ran. If a senior struggles to name anything, autonomy may come late in this program, which is worth checking with a second resident. With an intern, ask what has changed since their first month.
Do you get to do the procedures yourself, or mostly watch someone senior do them?
Why ask it
In a procedural field this is most of what training is, and the answer often depends on whether fellows share the service. Ask what they have done with their own hands this month, not what they are meant to have done by graduation.
When you are unsure of a plan overnight, how easy is it to wake an attending?
Why ask it
Supervision looks the same on paper everywhere. What differs is whether calling for help costs you anything, so listen for a sigh down the phone, a thank you for calling, or a senior who tells interns to ring before they are sure they need to.
Who taught you the most, and what did they actually do?
Why ask it
Good teaching in a hospital is specific and often brief, and residents can usually describe exactly what someone did differently. The method they name is one you can copy when it is your turn to teach.
How do you find out how you are doing, and when did feedback last change something you do?
Why ask it
End-of-rotation forms tend to arrive late and say 'read more'. The second half asks for one concrete correction, such as how they present a patient or tie a knot, and a resident who has one is being watched closely enough to improve.
How often does a page pull you out of a teaching session?
Why ask it
Conference is on every schedule, and what varies is whether anyone lets you sit through it. Ask who holds the pager for that hour. A named person covering means the lecture gets attended, and no name means it only gets listed.
How do you find time to read and study for exams when you are this busy?
Why ask it
Practical answers involve a question bank on a phone, teaching on rounds, or reading about the patient in front of them. A study plan described in the past tense is a comment on the workload. Which exams they sit depends on the country and the specialty, and it is worth finding out whether the program sets aside any time for them.
Who is your mentor here, and how did you find them?
Why ask it
Some programs assign an adviser on the first day and others leave it to luck and hallway conversations. Ask what the mentor has done lately: found them a project, read an application, or told them something they did not want to hear. If research matters to you, this is the moment to ask when in the week anyone gets to do it.
What happens here when someone makes a mistake?
Why ask it
You will hear either a process, where the case is reviewed and the resident is helped to tell the patient, or a story about someone being dressed down in front of the team. Then ask whether residents report their own near misses. People only do that where it feels safe.
Do the graduating residents feel ready to practice on their own?
Why ask it
Put this to a senior if one is in the room. Listen for what they still feel shaky about, a procedure done too few times or a clinic they barely worked in, and for whether that gap pushes people into a fellowship they had not planned on.
The Program
How well do the residents get along, and do you see each other outside the hospital?
Why ask it
You would spend more waking hours with these people than with anyone at home. Look for specifics: who covered whose shift, a group chat that is in daily use, a class that eats together after nights. 'We are like a family', offered without a single example, is a slogan.
What are the attendings like to work for on a bad day?
Why ask it
A quiet clinic afternoon flatters everybody. The bad day, with a long list and something gone wrong, is when a resident most needs teaching and is least likely to get it, so ask for a story from one.
What kind of person does well here, and who has a hard time?
Why ask it
Programs have temperaments: some reward the resident who asks for help early, others the one who quietly gets on with it. Compare the description with how you work at the end of a long month, since that is the version of you who would be training here.
What surprised you about this place after you started?
Why ask it
Ask for a pleasant one and an unpleasant one. These are the things a website and a tour cannot carry, and because most of them landed in the first month, residents tend to remember them exactly.
What kinds of patients do you see here, and what do you rarely get to see?
Why ask it
Where a hospital sits decides who comes through its doors, and a safety-net emergency department teaches different medicine from a referral center full of transfers. The gap they name, whether trauma, transplants or plain bread-and-butter cases, is what graduates of this place have to pick up somewhere else.
What has changed in the program since you started?
Why ask it
New leadership, a hospital merger, a bigger class or a dropped rotation can make the program you would join different from the one they are describing. Ask how residents heard about the change: in a meeting where they had a say, or in an email afterwards.
If you were in charge of this program for a year, what would you change first?
Why ask it
Everyone has an answer, so a resident who cannot find one is being careful, not content. Small fixable complaints such as parking or the call room are reassuring. Complaints about staffing, or about not being heard, are the ones to weigh.
When residents raise a problem, what happens next?
Why ask it
Ask for the most recent example. A schedule that changed after residents objected is one kind of leadership, and a survey nobody heard about again is another. It is also worth knowing whether they would take a problem to a chief resident or straight to the program director, which tells you how reachable the director is.
Who picks up your patients if you wake up too sick to come in?
Why ask it
A program with a backup system can describe it in one sentence. If what you hear is that people come in sick, or that a co-resident works a double, expect the same thinness when someone has a baby or a funeral to get to.
Has anyone left the program or switched specialties in the last few years?
Why ask it
One departure usually has a private reason behind it and is not yours to dig into. Several from the same class, or a table that goes quiet, is a pattern, and better raised with a second resident somewhere less public.
What are the senior residents doing next year, and how much did the program help?
Why ask it
Fellowships, first jobs and the cities people ended up in are what a program actually produces. Help means something specific here: a faculty member who picked up the phone, days off to interview, a mentor who read the personal statement.
Life Outside
Where do most residents live, and what is the drive home like after a night shift?
Why ask it
Their class's real neighborhoods and the price of a parking pass are things only residents can tell you. Press a little on the drive home: a program that offers a ride or a room to nap in has thought about tired drivers, and one that shrugs has not.
What do you like about living in this city, and what do you miss about the last place?
Why ask it
Training lasts years, long enough for the town to matter nearly as much as the hospital. Someone who moved for the Match and still has nothing good to say about the place is worth hearing out, especially if you would be moving alone.
What do you do with the hours you have off?
Why ask it
The honest answer is often sleep, which corrects the recruiting version of resident life. Anyone who names exercise, family time, or a hobby is telling you about their schedule as well as their discipline.
How do you keep up with a partner, family or friends on this schedule?
Why ask it
Listen for the mechanics: a standing phone call, a shared calendar, a partner who has learned what post-call means. Some will tell you a relationship did not survive intern year, and when they do, thank them and change the subject.
Has anyone in the program had a baby during residency, and how did the schedule cope?
Why ask it
If nobody has in recent memory, that is information too. Where someone has, the useful details are who covered their rotations and whether the time had to be made up at the end. Parental leave depends on the country, the employer and the specialty's own training rules, and whoever took it last can tell you what applied to them.
When did you last manage a doctor's or dentist's appointment of your own?
Why ask it
Clinics keep the same hours residents work, so a check-up or a therapy session means leaving a shift. Some programs have an answer for that, such as a half day nobody has to justify. 'You swap with someone' means a co-resident pays for it.
When was your last real stretch of time off, and how hard was it to arrange?
Why ask it
The contract gives a number of weeks. Whether they could choose them, and whether anyone phoned while they were away, shows how the schedule treats people. Leave rules vary by program and country, so ask how requests work where they are.
Can you live comfortably here on a resident's salary?
Why ask it
Pay usually follows a published scale by training year, so the figure is easy to look up. What a resident can add is what it covers: rent near the hospital, loan payments, whether people need a roommate or a second income. Whether extra paid shifts are allowed, and from which year, is each program's own rule and worth a follow-up.
What was the hardest week you have had, and what got you through it?
Why ask it
Asking for one week rather than the hardest thing in general produces a story instead of an adjective. What helped, whether a co-resident, a chief, a therapist, or nothing at all, is the more useful half of the answer.
How do you handle it when a patient does badly?
Why ask it
Support after a death or a bad outcome ranges from a proper debrief to nothing at all, and it is fair to ask which they got. Ask this gently, accept a short answer, and do not press for the details of the case.
Advice
What do medical students get wrong about your specialty?
Why ask it
The usual errors are about lifestyle, income, the patients, or how much of the work is procedures. Ask where they think the wrong idea comes from. It may be the one rotation students get to see, which is not always a typical month of the field.
What makes a medical student helpful to have on your team?
Why ask it
Asked on the first day of a rotation, this gets you the house rules for free: know your own patients cold, say when you are leaving, never vanish. Answers differ from one resident to the next, which is why it is worth asking each new team.
Who should think twice before going into your specialty?
Why ask it
Easier to answer than who is suited to it, and more honest. Expect something concrete: people who need to see a problem finished, people who cannot face the operating room before dawn, people who want to know their patients for years.
What should I look for on an interview day that programs do not show you?
Why ask it
Residents know where the seams are: who looks worn out at the dinner, whether seniors speak well of interns, which questions get a glance at the chief before an answer. Their list is a better guide than a ranking spreadsheet.
Is it all right if I email you a question or two after interview day?
Why ask it
Asked before you leave, this turns a post-interview message from a cold one into one they are expecting. Some programs ask applicants not to contact residents afterwards, and the rules on contact differ by specialty and matching system, so go by what this program told you.
Now that the interview is over, is there anything you would add to what you said in front of the group?
Why ask it
A panel or a dinner table gets the answer that suits the room. One to one, a week later, the same resident may add the caveat about a rotation or a hospital site that did not fit the occasion. Word it so that 'no, that covered it' is an easy reply.
On interview day I heard two different accounts of the call schedule. Which one matches this year?
Why ask it
Contradictions tend to show up afterwards, when you read your notes back. Often both versions are true, of different years, sites or tracks, and a resident can sort that out in two lines. Swap in whatever you heard two ways: call, elective time, the size of the incoming class.
If I came back for a second look, what should I ask to see?
Why ask it
Some programs hold second look days and some discourage them, and whether a visit counts for anything is the coordinator's question, not one to guess at. What a resident can name is the part the interview day skipped: a morning handover, the clinic across town, the workroom at six in the evening.
Which resident here has a life most like mine, and could you put us in touch?
Why ask it
Once the interview is behind you, it is clearer whose account is still missing: a parent, someone whose partner matched in another city, an international graduate, a resident headed for the fellowship you want. One introduction answers more than another round of general questions.
How did you choose between this program and the one you ranked just below it?
Why ask it
This is the decision you are in the middle of, and they made it not long ago. Listen for what broke the tie, such as a city, a feeling at the dinner or one faculty member, and whether they still think it was the right thing to go on. They may prefer not to name the other program, and the answer works without it.
What would you do differently if you were applying again?
Why ask it
Application regrets are concrete: programs skipped, a rank order they would change, a city they underweighted. A resident went through the process recently, under something close to the rules you will face, and their regrets are current in a way an older adviser's may not be.
What would give me the most honest look at this specialty before I have to choose?
Why ask it
A resident can point you to the right month, the right attending, or the clinic nobody thinks to shadow in. Advice to spend a week on nights, or in the unglamorous half of the field, usually means the daytime version flatters it.
Has training changed what you want from the rest of your career?
Why ask it
People drift toward or away from academic jobs, procedures or a certain pace once they have done the work for a while. If the answer is part-time practice, a move, or doubt about the specialty itself, you are being trusted with something, so do not carry it back to their co-residents.
What part of the job still feels like the reason you went into medicine?
Why ask it
After the questions about hours and paperwork, this one lets a tired person end somewhere good. Expect something modest, a patient who remembered their name or a diagnosis that clicked, and keep it in mind for your own second year.
Would you still choose medicine?
Why ask it
Save it for the end, and for a moment when nobody else is listening. A yes with conditions, or a long pause, is more useful than either the recruitment answer or the burnout monologue.
Talking With a Resident
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Which Questions for Which Conversation
Shadowing, or Before Medical School
Stay with Start Here and Advice. How they chose the field, what the day holds and whether they would do it again are what you can use now. Call schedules, sick cover and salaries belong to a later year.
On a Rotation With Them
The Work and Teaching are yours, a question at a time across the month. Ask what makes a student helpful on the first day, while the answer can still change how you spend the rest of the block.
During a Residency Interview or the Resident Social
This is what The Program and Life Outside are for. Residents at these events are partly recruiting, so ask about last week and the last example, which are harder to polish than opinions. Put the same two questions to an intern and a senior and compare. Keep the ones about people leaving, mistakes and money for a resident you have to yourself.
Post-Interview, Before You Rank
The questions in Advice about emailing afterwards, second looks and the rank list belong to these weeks. Write to one resident, say which day you interviewed, and keep it to two or three questions they can answer from a phone. Programs and matching systems set their own rules on contact after the interview, so follow what applicants were told. A resident cannot say where you stand on the program's list, so leave that out.
Timing and Setting
Catch Them Sitting Down
Residents talk freely in workrooms during quiet stretches, on downtime overnight, and after conference, and barely at all during rounds or an active admission. Ask whether now is a bad time and take the answer at face value.
Fifteen Minutes, Three Questions
A short, bounded ask is easier to say yes to than an open request for career advice. Pick the three questions you most want answered and leave when you said you would.
Ask About This Week, Not Their Career
Questions about the rotation they are on now get concrete answers, while questions about medicine in general tend to get platitudes. Start with today and let it widen if there is time.
Be Useful If You Are on the Team
Students who chase down an outside record or call a pharmacy earn conversations that students who only observe do not. Coffee is fine; taking one small task off a resident's list is better.
Follow-Up Questions Worth Having Ready
- Can you give me an example of that?
- Was that a typical week or an unusually bad one?
- Who did you ask for help, and how did that go?
- How long did that actually take?
- What would you do differently if it happened again tomorrow?
- Is that the same on every rotation, or just this one?
- What did you say, in the actual words you used?
Common Pitfalls
Asking Which Specialty You Should Choose
A resident knows their own path and almost nothing about yours, so the answer is usually either their specialty or a hedge. Ask what they were deciding between and why, then draw your own conclusions.
Pushing on Deaths and Mistakes
These questions are worth asking once, in a calm setting, with the case details left alone. If the answer is short, that is the answer, and following up turns a conversation into an interrogation. The same goes for a resident who left the program: one question, then move on.
Treating Complaints as a Verdict
Residents vent about the electronic record, parking, and staffing the way everyone vents about their job. Weigh what they say about being taught and supervised far more heavily than what they say on a bad day.
Asking a Resident to Criticize Their Program in Public
In a hallway, at a nursing station, or in a group with attendings present, nobody can answer honestly. Save the harder questions for a private moment, or accept the polished version.
Taking One Resident for the Whole Program
An intern in a heavy month and a senior on elective will describe two different hospitals. Before you decide anything about a place, hear from several people, and trust what repeats over what was said most vividly.