These Director of Nursing interview questions will help you look for the most important skills and qualifications in your candidates. Use them as a guide and adjust to your needs.
Give us an example where an urgent goal had to be set by you and was achieved.
Answer:- In my previous job I overlooked a team of around 20 nurses. The hospital which I was working with had a low patient satisfaction rate at merely 45 percent. This wasn’t acceptable to me and I wanted to work towards increasing the patient satisfaction rate to around 65 percent. I started making changes in the way my team worked. I gave them new and improvised ideas on how to deal with patients and communicate with them. I also held lots of brainstorming sessions with my team members so that ideas for better patient management could be shared and implemented. All of these changes eventually led to a surge in patient satisfaction. The patient satisfaction rate bounced upto almost 70 percent.
These Director of Nursing interview questions will help you look for the most important skills and qualifications in your candidates. Use them as a guide and adjust to your needs.
During the interview, discuss their nursing experience. Ask behavioral or situational questions inspired by real cases to assess leadership, teamwork and problem-solving. Look for candidates who keep calm under stress and demonstrate they can resolve conflicts. If the position has a specialty area like admissions or recruiting, tailor your questions accordingly. Often, their job may involve strategic planning so make a point to discover their relevant skills.
How do you handle customers or employees who tend to test your patience and can be extremely frustrating?
Answer:- Encountering people who are difficult and stubborn is a part and parcel of any job in any field. I am well aware of this and truly have accepted that I will meet all kinds of people in this industry. Just because I have been brought face to face with a difficult person does not affect me or bring about a change in my demeanor or personality. I have enough past experience and judgment to handle all kinds of frustrating individuals. Whether the issue is related to a patient, a colleague, or even to the management, I hear both sides of the story before coming to a conclusion and making a decision on how to handle the problem. I’m a very fair judge and make decision in an unbiased and neutral manner. I also handle sensitive matters smartly as I’m well aware that in the health care management service industry, dealing with frustrated clients is a part of the job description.
Give us an example where lack of communication was hampering the overall affairs at your workplace and what you did in order to handle it.
Answer:- Lack of communication can lead to disasters in any organization. In the medical industry in particular, lack of communication can prove to be lethal to a patient. In the past I had an experience where the life of a patient was almost at stake because of a lack of communication in the department and because the patient was not given certain medicines by the on call nurse. In order to prevent such situations, I started conducting department meetings on a daily basis so that everyone in the department was briefed about all the patient’s needs and requirements. These daily departmental meetings were short but kept all the team members aware of the jobs that they needed to do. This further resulted in the avoidance of miscommunication and mishaps.