Nursing supervisor interview questions and answers

Nursing Supervisor Interview Questions

Nursing supervisors promote and restore patients’ health by developing day-to-day management and long-term planning of patient care. These interview questions can help you find the perfect candidate for the role, someone with previous experience as a registered nurse and further training in healthcare management.

Use interviews to ensure your candidates have thorough knowledge of nursing duties. You may want to add process-based questions. For better results, tailor your questions and ask about relevant experience that applies to your organization. For example, you may want to include questions about recruiting or administrative tasks (e.g. record keeping and budgeting).

The following Nursing supervisor interview questions are designed to find candidates with team management and problem-solving skills. Your ideal candidate should perform well under pressure and have potential to grow as a team leader.

Operational and Situational questions

• What would you do if a nurse wasn’t following your instructions?
• How do you deal with conflicts between team members?
• How do you evaluate your team’s performance?
• If a nurse under-performs, how do you let them know? What do you do to motivate them?
• What clinical experience has been important and relevant to you?
• How do you keep up with changes in the field?
• What do you hope to gain from this position?

Role-specific questions

• What’s your experience in training, supervising and evaluating?
• What do you do differently when managing newly trained nurses as opposed to experienced nurses?
• What kinds of patients did you deal with as a nurse?
• How would you rate your computer skills?
• How would you report to the nursing director?
• Are you comfortable taking up nursing responsibilities when necessary?
• Do you think nursing or management skills are more important for a nursing supervisor?

Behavioral questions

• Tell me about a difficult case you handled as a nurse. How would you train your team to handle similar cases?
• Give me an example of a time you improved efficiency in clinical operations.
• Tell me about a time one of your staff didn’t get a positive performance review. What did you do about it?
• Tell me about a time you were short-staffed. How did you ensure patient care standards were met?
• How do you handle emotional family members?
• Describe a stressful situation you experienced and how you managed to stay calm.