Questions to Ask Residents
Questions for premeds, medical students, and anyone curious about residency, asked of a resident physician: how they chose the specialty, what a real day involves, how much they decide alone, and what they wish they had known before intern year.
The questions
Open any question for the note
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.
How did you pick this specialty, and what were you deciding between?
Why ask it
The alternatives are more revealing than the choice, since they show which tradeoffs mattered: continuity, procedures, hours, patient population. Many residents describe deciding late and for practical reasons, which is worth hearing early.
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. The unglamorous middle of the day is the part students never see.
What do you spend time on that you did not expect to be part of the job?
Why ask it
Prior authorizations, discharge paperwork, calls to pharmacies, and family updates take more of the day than most students imagine. Whatever they name is what medical school did not prepare anyone for.
How long was it before you felt useful?
Why ask it
Nearly every resident remembers the point where they stopped slowing the team down, and it arrives later than students expect. Hearing a real timeline takes some of the fear out of the first months.
What can you decide on your own now that you could not last year?
Why ask it
Naming new independence describes graduated responsibility concretely: a procedure unsupervised, a discharge decision, running a resuscitation. A vague answer suggests a program where autonomy arrives late.
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.
What happens here when someone makes a mistake?
Why ask it
The answer is either a system, with case review and support for disclosure, or a story about being humiliated in front of a team. Either way it tells you a great deal about the place.
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
Deaths and bad outcomes are absorbed largely without formal support in most training. Ask this gently, accept a short answer, and do not press for the details of the case.
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 is the money side working out, with loans and the salary?
Why ask it
Resident salaries are fixed and public, but interest accumulation, repayment choices, and local cost of living are what people actually struggle with. Most residents will discuss it plainly, and it is more useful than any general figure.
What part of the training do you think is unnecessary?
Why ask it
Residents can name the parts that teach them nothing, such as duplicate documentation or lectures scheduled at the end of a shift. The answer is a fair test of whether a program distinguishes training from staffing.
What do medical students get wrong about your specialty?
Why ask it
Every specialty is misunderstood in a consistent way, whether about lifestyle, income, patient mix, or how procedural it really is. Correcting that is one of the most valuable things a resident can do for a student.
How do you keep learning when you are this busy?
Why ask it
Practical answers involve question banks on a phone, teaching on rounds, or reading about the patient in front of them. Anyone describing a study plan they no longer follow is telling you about the workload.
What do you say to a family when you do not have an answer yet?
Why ask it
Speaking about uncertainty is a learned skill that residents pick up mostly by watching. Their actual phrasing is worth writing down, because you will need something to say in the same room one day.
Has training changed what you want from the rest of your career?
Why ask it
People shift toward or away from academics, procedures, or a particular pace of life once they see the work. Answers about part-time practice, geography, or leaving the specialty are common and rarely discussed publicly.
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. This is practical advice a student cannot get from an advisor who matched twenty years ago.
What do you wish someone had told you before intern year?
Why ask it
The gap between what students prepare for and what intern year demands is mostly logistical: placing orders, calling consults, running a list. Whatever they name is worth learning before July.
Would you still choose medicine?
Why ask it
Asking directly gets past reflexive encouragement. 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
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 gets a yes far more often 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 specific rotation they are on now produce concrete answers, while questions about medicine in general produce 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.
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.