I wasn’t very professional during the interview as I didn’t wear the appropriate clothes, I just had casual, every day clothes, and I felt I should have worn something smarter.
I also needed to prepare my interview a lot better as I should have wrote down questions that I was going to ask the patient, planned out better what I was going to do, and wrote down an explanation of each thing I was doing for the patient.
When I was asking the patient questions I didn’t speak very clearly as she wasn’t able to hear me properly, and I should have explained the procedure of what I was going to do.
When I was taking the patients blood pressure there was a 5 minutes silence as I didn’t talk to her about anything which I could have done, I should have used more small talk e.g. weather, holidays etc.
When the patient first came in I think I did quite well as I welcomed her in and tried to make her feel comfortable by talking and asking her questions. Also I made the patient see that I was listening to everything she was telling me.
I think I made quite a good effort to communicate although it was a bit poor sometimes as I sat there in silence for a while because I didn’t know what to talk about.
If I ever have to do anything like this again I know a few things I will have to improve, I will have to plan a better interview i.e. things to talk about to overcome my shyness etc. Suitable clothing so I feel confident, to make sure I close the door. I would make sure I have more eye contact with the patient and sit still comfortably in the seat instead of fidgeting and slouching.
I think the easiest part of the interview was when I was welcoming the patient in to the room and asking questions, I thought most of it was quite easy up until I took her blood pressure as that’s when I lost my confidence and didn’t know what to say and I confused myself at the end when I was explaining where the patient would be having her pregnancy test.
While I was talking I wasn’t very confident and I made it obvious that I was nervous as well as I kept on playing around with my pen and smiling all the time, and laughing because of how nervous I felt.
While we were doing this interview it made me think that I wouldn’t like to be a doctor in the future as I don’t think I would be very confident in speaking to different people everyday. I think there are many more steps I would need to take before I get to that stage as confidence comes with years of practice.
