Interviews can help ensure physician candidates fit culture

(HealthDay)—In preparing to interview to hire a new physician, practices must understand their own cultures, according to an article published in Medical Economics.

According to the article, there are five questions that can help a practice ascertain whether a physician candidate will indeed meet practice-specific criteria.

Asking a candidate to talk about their background can help ensure the candidate's self-report matches their résumé. Asking why a candidate chose a medical career should result in an answer that reflects the candidate's values and goals and gives some insight about how they will provide services beyond clinical skills. Asking a candidate why they are interested in the specific practice helps determine the candidate's motivation and due diligence in preparing for the interview. Behavior interviewing with real-life situations rather than hypothetical what-if scenarios helps elucidate whether a candidate is a good fit. Finally, it is helpful to ask whether the candidate has any questions for the interviewer to determine whether the candidate has interest in the practice.

"A critical step when hiring a physician is to do your homework to understand what's important to your own practice and what is the culture of the medical group," Jack Chou, M.D., a physician-in-charge at Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park in California, said in the article.

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