How to answer “Tell me about a time you made a mistake” in a medical school interview

A strong answer to "tell me about a time you made a mistake" describes one real error, takes responsibility for it without excuses, and spends most of its time on what you did afterward. The interviewer learns little from the mistake itself. They learn a great deal from whether you disclosed it, repaired it and changed what you do.

What the interviewer is assessing

• Professionalism and integrity
• Self-reflection and growth

Every physician makes mistakes. The profession in both the US and Canada expects an error that affects a patient to be disclosed to them, reported so the system can learn from it, and corrected rather than hidden. The interviewer is checking whether you already behave that way. They listen for whether you take responsibility in plain words, whether you told the people affected, whether you fixed what could be fixed, and whether the change you made afterward has lasted.

They also listen for proportion, because an applicant who describes a trivial slip as a crisis, or a serious harm as nothing, has misjudged what matters. In a panel interview, this question usually comes with a follow-up about what you'd do if you made an error as a medical student, and the panel wants the two answers to match. In an MMI, it appears at a personal station or inside a scenario where you discover an error, your own or a colleague's, and the rater scores whether you disclose it and how.

How to structure your answer

1. Describe the situation and the mistake in two or three sentences, saying plainly that it was yours.
2. Say what the mistake cost, who it affected and how you found out.
3. Explain what you did in the hours and days afterward, including whom you told and in what order.
4. Describe the specific change you made so the same error wouldn't happen again, and whether it has held.
5. Close with what the episode taught you about how you'll handle errors in medicine.

Choose a mistake with real stakes, such as one that affected a patient, a customer, a teammate or a result other people relied on, and that you handled better than you might have. A mistake from a job, a lab, a volunteer role or a team usually works better than one from a course, because somebody other than you was affected. The practice box gives you three minutes: give the mistake in 30 seconds and the rest to what you did about it.

Common mistakes

• Choosing a mistake that was really a group's fault, or somebody else's, leaves the interviewer without the admission the question asked for.
• Picking a mistake with no consequences, such as a typo nobody saw, tells the panel you've either never made a serious error or won't talk about one.
• Spending two minutes on the error and twenty seconds on the response leaves out the part the interviewer scores.
• Explaining why the mistake was understandable before saying it was yours sounds like an excuse even when the explanation is true.
• Offering a mistake that is really a strength, such as caring too much, signals that you're hiding the real answer.

Follow-up questions to prepare for

• What would you do if you made a medication error as a medical student and nobody noticed?
• How did the people affected react when you told them?
• Have you ever seen somebody else make a mistake and not report it?
• What is the difference between a mistake and negligence?
• Would you handle that same mistake differently today?