October 1, 2024

Flight nurse interview questions

Nursing

—A Paramedic, Nurse and Pilot Survival Guide.

Grace under pressure.

EMS crews are known for it.

EMS crews live it. EMS crews thrive on it.

That's the reason what I'm about to tell you next, may surprise you . . .

I can strike fear in any seasoned paramedic with two simple words.

Two words.

It's true, and it's easy to do.

Want to know the words?

Flight interview.

That's it. That's all it takes to get even seasoned paramedics, pilots and nurses hearts racing. Wannabe flight crews fear the flight interview.

Why?

Some fear is the natural by-product of performance stress. The performance stress we all feel when trying to do our best. This type of fear is healthy and usually beneficial. Everyone who interviews feels some performance based stress and fear.

But flight interviews go well beyond normal performance pressure.

There’s more to flight interviews than most people realize. A lot more.

Flight interviews are different than ‘regular’ interviews.

Why Flight Interviews are Different

What makes a flight interview different?

A flight interview is a process.

A flight interview is a multi-step screening process designed to eliminate over 90 percent of all applicants.

A flight interview is a step all nurses, pilots and paramedics go through to get hired to staff medical helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. I say “process” because that’s exactly what it is.

"There’s more involved in a flight interview than a ‘regular’ interview. Flight interviews ask more of candidates than almost any other professional interview, including other health and aviation interviews."

Why are flight interviews so demanding? Why are flight interviews setup this way?

In simplest terms, helicopter companies and health systems do it this way because they can.

Understandably, helicopter companies and health systems want to attract and retain the most qualified candidates. Flight interviews are an easy (and cheap) way to screen future flight crews.

Supply and demand is another reason for the current setup of flight interviews.

There are always more people who want to fly than flight jobs.

Employers know this and intentionally build a multi-step screening processes into the flight interview process. Companies try to weed out as many applicants as possible, as early as possible. The weeding out process saves money on training expenses and ideally leads to hiring the best fit for their current flight team.

All that is to say flight interviews are hard.

The end result is many flight interviews have evolved into a three part process:

Skills evaluation
Traditional Q&A style interview

When you combine the multi-step format with the fact many nurses, paramedics and pilots have little total interview experience, and even less flight interview experience, it’s easy to understand the fear of flight interviews.

This article is about taking some of the stress out of flight interviews.

The article helps prepare you for the traditional question and answer portion of the flight interview process. The whole idea is to move from a position of fear to one of strength and confidence.

How to Eliminate Flight Interview Fear

How do you get rid of flight interview fear?

Easy.

The same way you conquer any fear. The same way you conquered your fear of intubations or autorotations.

Start with knowledge.

"Educate yourself on exactly what to expect in a flight interview and then prepare."

You now know many flight interviews follow a 3-part process. The focus of this article is helping you prepare for the traditional question and answer phase of the flight interview process.

How do you prepare for the question and answer portion a flight interview?

You know already, right?

You prepare by answering real flight interview questions.

At first this might sound like a nasty catch 22 or cruel joke, right? How are you going to answer flight interview questions when you haven't flight interviewed yet?

Don't worry.

It's not a cruel joke and I definitely got you covered.

Answering practice flight interview questions is critical and you don't need to supply your own questions. But before I share flight interview questions, I want to be clear . . .

There's more to getting the Q&A portion of flight interviews right than just the questions.

It also involves everything from body language to eye contact to mirroring to voice inflection — what we call at EMS Flight Safety Network, the gamesmanship of flight interviews. I teach an entire step-by-step course on how to master any flight interview; and it's too much to cover in this article.

Starting with questions you can expect to hear in a flight interview gives you a very strong start. It puts you ahead of more than 90 percent of your peers.

Starting with flight interview questions makes good sense.