Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship interview questions
Palliative medicine interviewers listen for how you are in the room with someone who is seriously ill: what you ask, how you listen and how you stay steady when emotions run high. They also want to know how your residency specialty will shape your practice, and how you will stay well in work full of loss.
- Listening before advising
- Steady with strong emotion
- Habits that sustain you
What hospice and palliative medicine programs ask
Questions about the specialty itself, beside the ones every program asks.
Walk me through how you would start a conversation with a patient whose illness is getting worse.
- What they're listening for
- Whether you have a real approach to serious-illness conversations, not a script.
- How to answer
- Ask permission, find out what they understand and how much they want to know, share information in small, plain pieces and respond to emotion before adding facts. Then explore what matters most to them and what worries them.
- Where it goes wrong
- Leading with code status before understanding the patient.
Family members disagree about what their dying parent would want. How do you help?
- What they're listening for
- Whether you can keep a family focused on the patient's values.
- How to answer
- Meet together if you can, ask each person what they know of the patient's wishes, and move the conversation from what each of them wants to what the patient would say. Name the emotions in the room, and identify the legal decision-maker without leading with it.
- Where it goes wrong
- Siding with whoever agrees with the medical team.
A hospice patient at home has worsening pain, and the family is afraid that pain medicine will hasten death. How do you respond?
- What they're listening for
- Whether you can treat symptoms well and address fears honestly.
- How to answer
- Listen to the fear first, explain plainly that carefully adjusted pain medicine is used to relieve suffering and not to shorten life, and check for other causes and side effects. Make a plan with the family and the hospice nurse that they can follow at home.
- Where it goes wrong
- Dismissing the family's worry, or leaving the pain undertreated to avoid the conversation.
A team consults palliative care "for code status" on a patient who has not been told how sick they are. What do you do?
- What they're listening for
- Whether you can work with a team that finds the conversation hard, without taking it over or stepping back.
- How to answer
- Talk with the team first about the prognosis and what the patient knows, agree on who will share what, and plan the meeting together so the patient hears one consistent message.
- Where it goes wrong
- Asking the patient about resuscitation before anyone has explained the illness.
This work involves a lot of loss. How do you look after yourself?
- What they're listening for
- Whether you have habits that will keep you well in a field where burnout is a real risk.
- How to answer
- Name what you actually do (debriefing with colleagues, a pause after a death, time away that you protect) and a time it helped you through a hard stretch.
- Where it goes wrong
- Saying the losses do not affect you.
How will your residency specialty shape the palliative care physician you become?
- What they're listening for
- Whether you see what you bring, and how you will combine the two in your career.
- How to answer
- Name skills from residency that carry over (managing complex illness, caring for children, emergency care), what palliative training will add, and whether you plan to keep practicing in both.
- Where it goes wrong
- Treating your first specialty as something you are leaving behind entirely.
The questions every program asks
Expect these too. Each is explained in full on the main questions page.
- Tell me about yourself.
- Why do you want to do a fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine?
- Tell me about your research.
- Do you see yourself in academic medicine or in clinical practice?
- Tell me about a case from residency that you still think about.
- How do you like to teach residents and students?
- That's everything from me. What questions do you have for us?
Questions to ask hospice and palliative medicine programs
Ask what their website doesn't answer. These show you have thought about training there.
- How is time divided between inpatient consults, hospice, home visits and clinic?
- How does the team support fellows and staff after difficult deaths?
- How is the fellowship adapted for fellows coming from different residency specialties?
- How do fellows learn to teach serious-illness communication to residents and other teams?
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