Wright State Boonshoft School of Medicine (MD) Medicine InterviewFormat, Questions & Prep Tips

Why Wright State Boonshoft specifically — what draws you to the Dayton community and the school's veteran health mission?

Name the Dayton VA Medical Center affiliation. Cite specific Southwest Ohio communities or health challenges. Avoid prestige-neutral language.

Describe a clinical or community experience that challenged your assumptions about a patient population you serve.

AAMC Cultural Competence competency. Be specific about the population, the assumption, and the insight. Boonshoft prizes genuine reflective learning over polished narratives.

A patient who is a veteran presents with chronic pain and is seeking opioid renewal. His primary care physician is uncomfortable but the patient insists the medications are the only thing keeping him functional. How do you approach this?

Autonomy vs. beneficence in veteran care. Reference the opioid crisis, VA prescribing guidelines, non-pharmacological pain management, and the importance of the therapeutic relationship.

Ohio has expanded Medicaid under the ACA, but rural Southwest Ohio still has significant uninsured populations. As a future physician, what is your responsibility to patients who cannot pay?

EMTALA, charity care obligations, FQHC networks, the physician's ethical duty vs. practice financial sustainability, and systemic advocacy.

Tell me about a time you had to deliver disappointing news — to a patient, a family member, or a colleague. What did you do, and what would you change?

AAMC Interpersonal competency. Use SPIKES framework if applicable. The reflective component ("what would you change") is as important as the narrative.

Where do you see yourself practicing 10 years after residency, and why Ohio?

Boonshoft wants Ohio-committed physicians. Be specific: community type, specialty direction, and the Ohio connection — residency ties, family, stated mission alignment.

A colleague you trust tells you they have been using a stimulant medication unprescribed to get through exam season. What do you do?

Professionalism, physician health, duty to report, confidentiality vs. patient safety — apply AAMC Interpersonal and Intrapersonal competencies.

Tell me about an academic or research experience that required you to sit with genuine uncertainty. How did you handle not knowing the answer?

AAMC Thinking & Reasoning competency. Tolerance for ambiguity is a core physician skill — show intellectual humility and systematic reasoning.

Medicine in the Dayton region faces workforce shortages in primary care and mental health. How has your background prepared you to contribute to those gaps?

Ohio workforce context. Specificity about Dayton health challenges (opioid crisis, veteran mental health, poverty-related chronic disease) reads strongly.

Role-play: You are a student volunteer and must tell a veteran patient (played by the interviewer) at the Dayton VA that their long-awaited specialty appointment has been rescheduled again. They are angry and say the system has 'never cared' about veterans. Begin.

Acknowledge the legitimate frustration and the history behind it, avoid defensiveness, and take ownership of finding out what you can. This reflects Boonshoft's veteran-health mission — show patience, empathy, and accountability rather than reciting excuses.

You are shown opioid-overdose death-rate data for Montgomery County over the past decade, with a sharp rise and a partial recent decline. How do you interpret the trend, and what would you want to know before drawing conclusions about local interventions?

Distinguish trend from causation — a decline may reflect naloxone access, fentanyl-supply shifts, or treatment expansion rather than any single program. Ask about denominators and confounders. Dayton has been an epicentre of the crisis, so this fits Boonshoft's regional context.

You are explaining a new PTSD diagnosis to a combat veteran who bristles at the label, saying mental-health diagnoses are seen as weakness in his unit. How do you frame the conversation?

Use the patient's own language, emphasize function and operational readiness over the label, and frame treatment as a strength-based tool. Demonstrate cultural competence with military stigma. Avoid forcing the diagnostic term onto a resistant patient.

Tell me about a time you changed your mind about something important after encountering new evidence. What made you willing to revise your view?

AAMC Thinking & Reasoning. Show genuine intellectual humility, not a story where you were quietly right all along. Describe how you weighed the new evidence and what the revision cost you. Reflective capacity is a core Boonshoft theme.

A rural Southwest Ohio patient cannot afford a recommended medication and asks you to falsify a prior-authorisation form to get it covered. How do you respond?

Acknowledge the real affordability barrier and your sympathy, but explain why falsification undermines trust and is unacceptable. Pivot to legitimate routes — patient-assistance programs, alternative agents, appeals. Shows integrity paired with genuine advocacy for an under-resourced patient.

Boonshoft's mission centers on Southwest Ohio's underserved and veteran communities. What in your own background gives you a durable, rather than passing, commitment to this kind of work?

Draw on specific lived or sustained experience rather than a single episode, and connect it concretely to Dayton-area needs. Boonshoft wants evidence of staying power and Ohio commitment, not a one-time volunteer story or generic altruism.