Bring your strongest stories to every Pharmacy PGY-2 Psychiatry interview

Question practice

Questions drawn from the realities of Pharmacy PGY-2 Psychiatry

Practise explaining the clinical decisions, patient conversations and career experiences that matter in Pharmacy PGY-2 Psychiatry—then handle follow-ups that ask for evidence behind your first answer.

1. 01

   Reflecting on your PGY-1 residency, what was the most surprising or unexpected aspect of working with patients with severe mental illness, and how did you adapt to it?

2. 02

   You are reviewing a patient's medication list and notice a potential drug-drug interaction between a newly prescribed antibiotic and their existing psychotropic regimen. Describe your process for identifying, assessing, and resolving this interaction with the team.

3. 03

   How would you approach a situation where a patient's family member expresses significant concerns or dissatisfaction with the prescribed psychotropic regimen, disagreeing with the treatment team?

4. 04

   You discover a significant medication error in a psychiatric patient's chart from a previous shift that could lead to harm (e.g., incorrect dosing, drug interaction). What is your immediate ethical and professional response?

5. 05

   Our program encourages residents to engage in scholarly activity. What type of research question or QI project would you be most interested in pursuing during a PGY-2 Psychiatry fellowship, and what impact do you hope it would have?

6. 06

   How do you foresee yourself integrating into our institution's existing mental healthcare team structure, including psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, and other allied health professionals?