- What are your greatest strengths?
- What are your biggest weaknesses?
- Where do you see yourself in five years?
- Besides your work, what’s something you’re passionate about in your life?
- Do you have any hobbies?
- What do you do to manage stress at work or in your free time?
CRNA School Interview Tips & Sample Questions!
CRNA School Interview Questions About Your Career goals
When you’re preparing your answers to the crna school interview questions about your career goals, remember to combine both logic and you have to wake up at 4am to spend all day in clinicals after very little sleep, you’ll need to have a strong “why” to keep you going. Otherwise, you may struggle through the program, or worse yet, decide half way through that it’s not worth the effort.
Inside Interview Secrets, you’ll find questions on the following topics:
In addition to crna school interview questions, you will find a workbook and trying again next year.
3 most common and often difficult CRNA school interview questions
Tell me about yourself. Even though it’s one of the most common interview questions, it tends to trip CRNA school candidates up. On the surface, it may seem like easy points, since you know yourself better than anyone. But in actuality, it’s a broad and open-ended question which makes it challenging to answer. Whenever I’m presented with this question, I almost panic because I’m not sure where to start in my life story.
Luckily, you don’t have to struggle like I did answering this question for my CRNA school interview with the use of this easy and effective formula I found online. This formula involves speaking on these 3 areas of your life:
Here is an example.
Now keep in mind you don’t have to start with your present role, you could even start with your past experiences. The point is you want to touch on the past, present, and future gives the admissions committee what they need to properly evaluate you.
Why Anesthesia?
Every year CRNA school applicants are rejected not due to academics but because they can’t answer this one question. Unfortunately, it all stems from lacking clarity on why you want to be a nurse anesthetist.
You would think this would be an easy question to answer. Especially if providing anesthesia care is something you really want to do. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this question make or break CRNA school applicants.
In my opinion, it’s hard because you’re trying to think of something original or unique to say. You don’t want to spit out this cliché answer. Liking anesthesia and wanting to help people are not adequate reasons to explain why you chose anesthesia. So, you must dig deeper.
How to answer: This question should be answered with complete confidence and genuineness. You must be clear on your “Why” when it comes to anesthesia. And the best way to do this is to make your “Why” statement not only clear, but simple, actionable, and focused. And most importantly, it should resonate within you. An example “Why” statement could be “To advocate and provide quality anesthesia care so they can get back to their baseline prior to surgery”.
Why Should We Accept You?
This is a hard question, right? Your first instinct is probably to tell them you’re highly motivated and love anesthesia and will make a great Nurse Anesthetist.
Of course, you should love anesthesia and I’m sure all the other applicants do as well. Your answer should set you apart, not group you all together. So here you want to start thinking about what makes you different than the other CRNA school candidates in the next room.
How to answer: This question here is all about selling yourself and the skillset you possess as a critical care nurse. Just like you in your personal statement, it’s about showing the committee by using a story. You must show them you are a leader because of xyz. That you’re passionate as illustrated by xyz. And your critical thinking skills have been formulated over the years of caring for open-heart patients.
Interview Questions for Nurse Anesthetists:
Demonstrates candidates compassion for their patients, as well as communication and interpersonal skills.
