How to Interview for Integrity in Healthcare

Integrity is defined as the quality of being honest and fair and possessing high moral principles. For obvious reasons, having integrity is important in the world of healthcare! When your healthcare facility is hiring nurses or other personnel, you want to do so in a way that allows you to rest assured the people you’re bringing onto the team possess this all-important quality. Here’s how to do it:

Ask the Right Interview Questions

Asking the right questions during the interview process is the number-one way to find out what kind of integrity your candidate has. Their answers clue you in on their personal ethos, what they think and feel at their core that drives everything they do. Here are some good examples of questions to ask that can offer insight into a candidate’s integrity:

What do you do when someone comes to you with a problem?
Have you ever faced consequences for doing the right thing?
How do you deal with failure? Give me an example from your past experience.
Tell me about the last time you got angry at work. How did you deal with those feelings?
Describe a time when you had to deliver difficult news. How did you go about that?
What do you do when you need to admit your mistakes?

Evaluating the answers to these questions will give you a much greater sense of what kind of character and integrity the candidate has. It won’t be difficult to assess whether the person values trust and fairness, or if they’re simply telling you what they think you want to hear.

Check the References

Keep in mind that part of the interview process doesn’t involve the candidate themselves – checking the candidate’s references, and asking pointed questions to those individuals about the candidate’s character, is another great way to find out if they have a strong sense of integrity. Ask the candidate’s references if they feel that the candidate is someone with a strong sense of integrity, and to describe what sort of examples they’ve seen of that in the past. Often, what others have to say about an individual speaks volumes above what the person will say about themselves.

Trust Your Gut

The final piece of advice is simple: trust your gut when it comes to evaluating a candidate for integrity. Do you get the sense that the person in front of you is one of high moral character, committed to upholding the values and ethics of proper healthcare? If you’re not convinced, it’s worth asking yourself if it’s someone you really want on your team.