Pharmacy School Interview Questions

These are the questions which were asked at recent Pharmacy School Interviews:

1. Tell me about yourself?
2. Why Pharmacy?
3. What can you contribute to this University?
4. Which science is most important to pharmacy and why?
5. Why is organic chemistry important to pharmacy?
6. Name 3 drugs delivery system?
7. Name a prescription-only medicine (POM) and what it does?
8. What is antibacterial resistance? How does it occur?
9. What can one do to prevent resistance?
10. Draw an amino acid?
11. Draw a ketone?
12. How do antihistamines work?
13. Which of the antihistamines cause drowsiness?
14. What is the most important drug to come out in the past 10 years?
15. What would you do if you disagreed with a medication prescribed for a patient?
16. Describe the role of a pharmacist?
17. What is the difference between a branded and generic drug?
18. Tell me about different ways drugs can be administered?
19. Why would you choose to inject a drug when you could choose to give drugs as a pill?
20. Why and when are patches used?
21. How do topical solutions work?
22. How does methadone work?
23. Tell me about 5 prescribed drugs?
24. What is a profession?
25. Why is pharmacy considered as a profession?
26. Where do drugs come from?
27. What is the role of pharmacists in society?
28. What service could pharmacists offer people to take pressure of GPs?
29. Tell me about a drug that has been in the news recently?
30. What does MRSA stand for?
31. Name 3 ways we discover drugs?
32. What is insulin?
33. Why does insulin have to be delivered intravenously only?
34. What is the controversy with Herceptin? (the breast cancer drug)
35. If a patient wants to take insulin orally, what must be done to the drug?
36. With the dosage?
37. What is an anti-fungal?
38. Why are pharmacists important in the NHS?
39. What is the role of the primary care pharmacist?
40. Would you prescribe a patient who is suffering from flu antibiotics? Why?
41. What functional groups give certain properties to a molecule?
42. Name 3 ways a pharmacists helps to promote health in the community?
43. Have you read anything interesting in the news recently related to pharmacy?
44. What are preventive medicines and there importance?
45. What would you take into account when prescribing drugs to a patient?
46. What skills does a pharmacists need to have?
47. Where in the profession do you see yourself in 10 years time?
48. Why are drugs stored in particular ways in a pharmacy?
49. Tell me about your work experience?
50. What did you see during your work experience that you liked and disliked about pharmacy?
51. Which subjects other than science that you study may be helpful when you are a pharmacist?
52. Tell me how the heart works?
53. What is a medication?
54. What is a generic drug? Reason for cheaper price?
55. When can a generic drug be produced?
56. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
57. Describe a leadership role you have played?
58. What would you have done differently?
59. Why pharmacy and not medicine?
60. What are the challenges you will experience as a pharmacy student in this University?
61. What are the frustrations of a pharmacist?
62. Give an example when you’ve seen leadership in your work experience?
63. And in your own personal life?
64. What did you like best and least about your work experience?
65. Some NHS Trusts will not put obese patients and smokers on the waiting lists until they lose weight or give up smoking. What are your views on this?
66. Should immunisations be made compulsory?
67. What one event/action do you regret and why?
68. What do you wish you had done instead?
69. What did you learn from it?
70. What is a prescription drug?
71. What is the difference between hospital, industrial and community pharmacy?
72. What is palliative care?
73. Do you think its right for parents to conceive a second child to cure the disease of their first child?
74. How do you know when you are getting stressed?
75. Take us through what you are going to be doing here over the next three years?
76. What interests you most about our curriculum here?
77. What are your likely contributions to University life?
78. Who do you admire most in your personal life and why?
79. You caught your best friend cheating in his 4th year pharmacy exam, What would you do about it?
80. What is diabetes?
81. How do politics influence pharmacy?
82. Name three drug delivery methods and explain each of them?
83. What are a metered-dose inhaler and a spacer?
84. Explain dosage of inhalers compared to tablets?
85. What advice would you give a patient who wants to buy drugs on the internet?
86. How does penicillin work?
87. Name 5 of your weaknesses?
88. Are you a team player or a team leader?
89. Does every team need a leader?
90. What are the qualities of a team player?
91. What are the qualities of a team leader?
92. How would your enemies describe you?
93. What sort of changes do you see in pharmacy over the next 10-20 years?
94. What is the difference between pharmacology and pharmacy?
95. Why not a London University?
96. How would you deal with an irate customer?
97. How do you handle conflict?
98. Describe your time management skills?
99. What do you anticipate a typical day in your career to be like?
100. What is one of the major issues facing pharmacist today?
101. What is an overdose?
102. Explain the synthesis of aspirin?
103. What have you found most challenging in your life time?
104. What do you think about drug trials?
105. What are drug trials and how are they organised?
106. Who takes part in such trials?
107. What did they learn from Northwick Park trials?
108. Why should we take you rather than someone else?
109. If you don’t get into pharmacy what will you do?
110. When do you use patches and how do they work?
111. What do pharmacists do?
112. What are controlled drugs?
113. What is a protein?
114. What reaction makes proteins from amino acids?
115. What are Pharmacodynamics?
116. What are Pharmacokinetics?
117. What are your qualities?
118. How do cope with criticism?

Scenarios:

1. You have to choose one of your course mates as a treasurer for a party you are organising, which of the following do you choose and why? why not choose the others?
   a. (Tim) is a friendly guy, who everyone gets on well with, but he is currently failing in his numeracy course.
   b. (Amy) is a show off and brags about her excellent marks. No one likes her much.
   c. (Sophie) has just been cautioned for shoplifting and is trying to show her tutor that she is trustworthy.

2. You have handed in an essay which you worked really hard on and expect an excellent mark. Instead, your mark is very poor and you are upset because you think your tutor is failing you on purpose; How do you approach the situation?
   a. You compare your essay with the one your friend wrote and see where you were marked down.
   b. You go to your tutor and complain about your mark, pointing out how unfair it is and how hard you prepared for it.
   c. You go to another tutor who you think sympathises with you, and complain about your mark, and ask for a second opinion.
   d. None of the above (explain what you would do and why)

3. You have been asked to prepare a cake by a lady, for her daughter's wedding. She has asked you specifically to make it gluten free, however you forgot to note this down when you took the order; it's the day of the wedding and she's come to pick up the cake. How do you deal with the situation?

4. Your course friend is married and has two children. Her husband however does not want her to be on the midwifery course, so she is forced to study at night. One day she comes to the course with a black eye! How do you deal with the situation and what kind of advice can you give her?

5. You are the captain of a sinking ship, and you can only save one of the following people, because there is only one more place in the lifeboat. Who would you choose and why?
   a. A young homosexual male, who looks after his mother, who has Alzheimer’s and is the manager of a company, with thirty employees.
   b. A teen mum, who has a a little girl and is an ex drug abuser. She now suffers from depression.
   c. A forty year old man with Down’s syndrome, who lives with his cat and his rabbit and works in a charity shop.

6. You are in a club and your friend is sitting outside drunk. How would you convince him to come back into the club?