NHS Band 7 nurse interview questions — with sample-answer guidance

The step up from Band 6. Panels want to hear how you run the ward over weeks and months, through other people, with safety first.

• 1. What will you bring to this Band 7 post, and why now?

  What to demonstrate: Specific experience that matches the job description, such as leading shifts, developing staff or an improvement you led, and why this service is the right next step. Show you understand that the role is mostly leading others.

• 2. How would you approach your first 90 days as ward manager?

  What to demonstrate: Listen first: meet the team, patients and key colleagues. Learn from the data, such as incidents, complaints, staffing and audits. Agree priorities with your line manager, then make a few early, visible improvements rather than changing everything at once.

• 3. How do you make sure the ward is safely staffed?

  What to demonstrate: Plan the roster against the agreed establishment, use acuity and skill mix as well as numbers, and fill gaps through bank and redeployment. Escalate shortfalls through the local process and record them. NICE's 2014 safe staffing guideline and NHS England's safer staffing guidance are the usual reference points.

• 4. How would you manage a team member's repeated sickness absence?

  What to demonstrate: Follow the employer's attendance policy with HR advice. Start with a supportive conversation about the cause, refer to occupational health where it helps, consider reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010, and be consistent and fair across the team.

• 5. Tell me about a time you managed underperformance.

  What to demonstrate: Clear expectations and evidence, a supportive conversation to find the cause, a documented plan with review dates, and the employer's capability policy with HR advice if it does not improve. Keep patient safety in view throughout.

• 6. How do you lead your team through a change they do not want?

  What to demonstrate: Explain why, using evidence the team recognises, involve them in how it is done, listen to concerns, test on a small scale, and keep communicating until it sticks. Show how you handled a resistant colleague respectfully.

At Band 7 you own the ward's audits, incidents and complaints. Panels look for openness, learning and evidence that changes stick.

• 1. How would you prepare your ward for a CQC inspection?

  What to demonstrate: Be ready all the time rather than for a visit: know CQC's five key questions (safe, effective, caring, responsive, well-led), keep audits and actions current, and make sure staff can talk confidently about how the ward keeps patients safe. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own regulators.

• 2. Tell me about an incident where you led the response.

  What to demonstrate: Keep the patient safe, meet the duty of candour and engage compassionately with the patient, family and staff. In England, NHS organisations respond under the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), choosing a proportionate learning response. Look for system causes rather than blame, and check the actions stick.

• 3. How do you use audit and data to improve care?

  What to demonstrate: Pick measures that matter for your patients, such as falls, pressure ulcers or medication errors. Share results visibly with the team, act on them, and re-audit to see whether the change worked.

• 4. A complaint about one of your nurses is upheld. What do you do?

  What to demonstrate: Respond openly to the complainant, support the nurse through a fair conversation, and find what the team can learn. Link it to the incident process if there was a safety issue, and avoid making one person carry a system problem.

• 5. How do you manage your ward budget?

  What to demonstrate: Know where the money goes, usually pay first. Manage temporary staffing through good rostering, control stock, and work with your finance partner and line manager. Never trade patient safety for savings, and escalate when the two conflict.

The culture on a ward reflects its leader. Panels want to hear how you keep good people, develop them and make it safe to speak up.

• 1. How do you create a culture where staff feel safe to speak up?

  What to demonstrate: Model it yourself, thank people who raise concerns, act and tell them what happened, and make sure they know the Freedom to Speak Up guardian route. Handle mistakes with learning rather than blame.

• 2. How would you improve staff retention on the ward?

  What to demonstrate: Start with data and conversations, such as leavers' and stay interviews, then act on what matters: flexible working, development, wellbeing and a voice in decisions, the themes of the NHS People Promise. Measure turnover and vacancy rates over time.

• 3. How do you make appraisals and development meaningful?

  What to demonstrate: Regular, honest conversations linked to goals and development, not a yearly form. As a line manager you may act as an NMC revalidation confirmer, so keep up with what nurses need to revalidate.

• 4. How do you promote equality, diversity and inclusion in your team?

  What to demonstrate: Fair access to rosters, training and opportunities, challenging discrimination when you see it, reasonable adjustments, and using data such as your trust's Workforce Race Equality Standard results to spot gaps.

• 5. How do you look after your own wellbeing as a leader?

  What to demonstrate: Practical habits such as protected time, a trusted peer or supervisor to talk to, and boundaries. Shows self-awareness, and that you role-model the behaviour you want from your team.

Panels want a manager who is still a credible nurse and who makes hard calls for the right reasons.

• 1. Why this trust, and what do you know about our priorities?

  What to demonstrate: Specific research: the trust's values, strategy, recent inspection report and the service's challenges, linked to what you would contribute.

• 2. How do you stay clinically credible while managing?

  What to demonstrate: Regular time working clinically alongside the team, keeping up to date, and knowing when to step in and when to let others lead.

• 3. Tell me about a difficult decision you made that was not popular.

  What to demonstrate: The reason (usually safety or fairness), how you involved people and explained it, how you handled the reaction, and the outcome. Shows courage with respect.

• 4. Where do you see this service in two years?

  What to demonstrate: A realistic vision tied to the trust's priorities and patient needs, with two or three concrete steps and how you would measure progress.