Thomas Jefferson CRNA Interview: Format and Questions (2026)

According to the 2025-2026 Jefferson College of Nursing DNP Nurse Anesthesia Program Student Handbook, faculty use the interview to make sure you understand the substantial full-time commitment the program requires and the strict policy against working outside the program without written approval from the Director. For a broader look at how nurse anesthesia panels run across programs, see our guide to CRNA school interviews in 2026-27. Confirm your exact interview day schedule and format in your invitation email.

Before your interview, you select your preferred campus location on the admission portal. Jefferson assigns locations on a first-come, first-served basis alongside your admission application and each site's capacity. You receive your admission decision and campus location assignment by email about four weeks after the interview. If you want to appeal your assigned campus, you must submit a written request to the Program Director within five business days of that notification, and the decision of the NAP Chair and Program Director is final.

Some clinical affiliates also require a second interview after you are accepted into the program, such as Christiana Care. The clinical site's decision on that post-acceptance interview does not affect your enrollment in Jefferson's program.

To rehearse clinical and behavioral questions out loud before your date, Confetto runs AI mock interviews for CRNA applicants with follow-up questions on your ICU experience and pharmacology. Start your free week.

• Before the interview: Select your preferred campus location on the Jefferson admission portal by the stated deadline.
• During the interview: Expect faculty to review the full-time study requirement (capped at 64 hours per week of class and clinical averaged over four weeks) and the prohibition on unapproved outside RN employment.
• After the interview: Watch your email for your admission decision and campus location assignment.
• After notification: Submit a written request to the Program Director if you need to appeal your campus assignment.
• After acceptance: Complete any secondary clinical site interview required by specific affiliates such as Christiana Care, and secure active, unencumbered RN licenses in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware before clinicals begin.

Jefferson's DNP Nurse Anesthesia program operates across three Pennsylvania academic locations, and your campus preference is tied directly to the post-interview assignment process. Dr. Bimpe Adenusi, PhD, CRNA, serves as Chair and Program Administrator across the program.

The Center City campus in Philadelphia (901 Walnut Street) houses the Jefferson College of Nursing alongside Sidney Kimmel Medical College and the Colleges of Pharmacy, Health Professions, Population Health, Life Sciences, and Rehabilitation Sciences. Dr. Robin Birchenough, DNP, CRNA, is the Director and Assistant Program Administrator for Center City (Dr. Lauren Brown is also listed as Director for Center City).

The Montgomery County location sits inside Jefferson's Nicholas and Athena Karabots Medical Building at 1330 Powell Street, Suite 608, in Norristown, PA. It has a 40-foot by 30-foot main classroom, faculty and administrative offices, and an advanced simulation center. Dr. Michael Kost, DNP, CRNA, directs the Montgomery County location.

Per the 2026-2027 University Catalog, the College of Nursing is expanding to a Lehigh Valley location in Summer 2026 at the Lehigh Valley Health Network Center for Healthcare Education, 3900 Sierra Circle, Center Valley, PA. Dr. Jill Hanisak, DNP, CRNA, is the Director and Assistant Program Administrator for Lehigh Valley.

We wrote the practice questions and sample answers below to match the ICU pharmacology, pathophysiology, and program-commitment topics CRNA faculty test and the policies at Jefferson. They are for practice only. For more prompts across drug classes, hemodynamics, and personal questions, read our full list of CRNA school interview questions with answers.

Question 1 (Pharmacology and hemodynamics): Walk me through the receptor profile of norepinephrine versus phenylephrine, and tell me when you would reach for one over the other in a hypotensive patient.

Example answer written by our team. The applicant is invented: "Norepinephrine is primarily a potent alpha-1 adrenergic agonist with modest beta-1 agonist activity. The alpha-1 stimulation causes peripheral arterial and venous vasoconstriction, which raises systemic vascular resistance and mean arterial pressure, while the beta-1 activity supports myocardial contractility and helps maintain cardiac output and heart rate. Phenylephrine is a pure alpha-1 agonist with no beta activity. It raises systemic vascular resistance and blood pressure purely through vasoconstriction, which often triggers a vagally mediated reflex bradycardia and can drop cardiac output in a patient with poor ventricular function. In my medical ICU, if a patient is in septic shock with warm extremities, low systemic vascular resistance, and borderline contractility, norepinephrine is my first-line pressor because it restores vascular tone without blunting stroke volume. I reach for phenylephrine when hypotension is driven by pure vasodilation accompanied by tachycardia or an arrhythmia like rapid atrial fibrillation, where adding beta-1 stimulation could worsen the heart rate and myocardial oxygen demand."

Question 2 (Ventilator and ABG scenario): Your intubated ICU patient has an arterial blood gas showing pH 7.22, PaCO2 64 mmHg, PaO2 68 mmHg, and HCO3 25 mEq/L on volume control ventilation (tidal volume 420 mL, rate 14, PEEP 5, FiO2 0.50). How do you interpret this gas and what changes do you anticipate?

Example answer written by our team. The applicant is invented: "This blood gas shows uncompensated acute respiratory acidosis with mild hypoxemia. The pH is acidemic at 7.22, driven by hypercapnia with a PaCO2 of 64, and the bicarbonate of 25 is still normal, telling me the kidneys have not had time to compensate. First, I assess the patient and the circuit before touching the ventilator. I check chest rise, auscultate breath sounds to rule out a pneumothorax, mucus plug, or right mainstem migration, and look at peak and plateau pressures on the ventilator to see if compliance has dropped or airway resistance has spiked. Assuming the airway is patent and the problem is hypoventilation, we need to increase minute ventilation to blow off CO2. Provided plateau pressures are safely below 30 cm H2O and the patient does not have severe auto-PEEP, increasing the respiratory rate from 14 to 18 or 20 is the cleanest first step to increase minute ventilation while preserving lung-protective tidal volumes. To improve the PaO2 of 68, I would also discuss titrating PEEP up to 8 or 10 cm H2O to recruit alveoli before simply turning up the FiO2."

Question 3 (Full-time commitment and multi-state clinical travel): Jefferson prohibits outside work without the Director's written approval and requires clinical travel across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. How have you prepared for three years without full-time income and a tri-state clinical schedule?

Example answer written by our team. The applicant is invented: "Over the past two years in the ICU, I built a dedicated savings account to cover my fixed living expenses and car maintenance during the 36-month program, and my partner and I practiced living solely on one income for the last eight months so there would be no financial surprises once classes start in the fall. I do not plan to work during the program. I read that class and clinical hours can reach 64 hours a week averaged over four weeks, and that the first two semesters front-load advanced pharmacology, pathophysiology, and anesthesia principles before the six-week simulation boot camp. On the logistics side, I already hold an active Pennsylvania RN license and have mapped out the endorsement applications and fees for New Jersey and Delaware so both are unencumbered well before Semester 3. I also have a reliable car for rotating across sites and taking call shifts."

• Drill 4 more pharmacology prompts out loud: Compare propofol, etomidate, and ketamine for rapid sequence induction in a septic trauma patient. Explain the mechanism of action and reversal of rocuronium versus succinylcholine, including every contraindication to succinylcholine. Compare milrinone and dobutamine in decompensated heart failure. Walk through the cellular mechanism and treatment of malignant hyperthermia.
• Drill 4 more clinical and physiology prompts: Explain the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve and what shifts it to the right. Walk through the stages of anesthesia and how you assess depth. Differentiate cardiogenic, hypovolemic, and distributive shock using pulmonary artery catheter or arterial waveform numbers. Describe how you prepare an ICU patient for emergent bedside intubation.
• Drill 4 more Jefferson-specific behavioral prompts: Why a DNP in Nurse Anesthesia at Thomas Jefferson University, and why did you select your preferred campus (Center City, Montgomery County, or Lehigh Valley)? Tell us about a clinical mistake or near-miss in your ICU and what you changed afterward. What clinical problem have you seen in your unit that could form the basis of a DNP quality improvement scholarly project in NU 719 and NU 720? How will you handle critical weekly formative feedback from CRNA and anesthesiologist preceptors?

On its DNP Nurse Anesthesia program page, Jefferson publishes five years of Council on Accreditation (COA) performance data covering the 2021 through 2025 graduating cohorts. First-time National Certification Examination (NCE) pass rates rose from 72% in 2021 to 91.7% in 2024 and 92.7% in 2025, an increase of 20.7 percentage points over four years by our calculation from Jefferson's Program Performance Data table. Every cohort from 2021 through 2025 achieved a 100% overall NCE pass rate, and the Class of 2025 recorded 0% attrition and 100% employment within six months of completion.

To prepare students for the NCE, Jefferson integrates content from APEX Anesthesia Review and Prodigy into select courses and requires every student to sit for the computerized adaptive Self-Evaluation Examination (SEE) twice: once in August of the second year (benchmark score 400) and once in May of the third year (benchmark score 430), paid for by Jefferson on first attempts.

Jefferson's Doctor of Nursing Practice in Nurse Anesthesia is an entry-level, full-time, on-campus program that runs 36 months across nine consecutive semesters and 85 credits. The program begins in the Fall semester of Year 1 and finishes in the Summer semester of Year 3. Although you complete your degree requirements in the summer, Jefferson permits DNP Nurse Anesthesia students to walk in the May graduation ceremony at the end of the spring semester. The program holds Continued Accreditation through 2029 from the Council on Accreditation (COA) of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs.

For the six weeks leading up to starting clinical experiences in the third semester (which continue through the ninth semester), students complete an intense pre-clinical simulation and skills lab boot camp, per the 2024-2025 program handbook. During the first and second clinical semesters, students are supervised in a 1:1 teacher-to-student ratio by a board-certified anesthesiologist or CRNA, and overall supervision never exceeds 2:1 (students are never supervised by a resident or fellow). Student time commitment is capped at 64 hours per week averaged over four weeks, with a mandatory 10-hour rest period between scheduled shifts and a maximum of 16 continuous hours of direct patient care.

Contact Jefferson Graduate Admissions directly at enroll@jefferson.edu or 215-951-2800 (or program leadership at 215-503-9438) to confirm the current cycle's application deadline, class size, minimum GPA, CCRN, and ICU prerequisite checklist. To see how ICU experience, CCRN certification, GPA, and science prerequisites compare across programs nationally, read our guide to CRNA school requirements.

Once enrolled, you must obtain and maintain current, unencumbered RN licenses in three states before starting clinical rotations in your third semester: Pennsylvania (PA), New Jersey (NJ), and Delaware (DE). You must also keep current BLS, ACLS, and PALS certifications on file at all times. If any license or American Heart Association certification expires, you cannot enter a clinical site and must make up any missed clinical hours.

• Clinical volume: Over 2,000 hours of clinical practice and more than 650 administered anesthetics across surgical, obstetrical, and diagnostic procedures.
• Outside employment: Prohibited without written approval from the Program Director, and under COA standards, students may never work as a nurse anesthetist by title or function.
• Admissions contact: Email enroll@jefferson.edu or call 215-951-2800 to confirm current application deadlines, class size, and prerequisite details.

Use this two-week schedule to prepare both your ICU clinical reasoning and your Jefferson-specific logistics before interview day.

When you are ready to test your answers out loud under pressure, Confetto's AI mock interviewer asks follow-up questions on your vasoactive drips, ventilator settings, and personal stories, and scores every response against a CRNA rubric. Start your free week.

• Days 1 to 4 (ICU pharmacology and drips): Write out receptor profiles, induction doses, onset, duration, and hemodynamic effects for propofol, etomidate, ketamine, dexmedetomidine, fentanyl, succinylcholine, rocuronium, norepinephrine, epinephrine, phenylephrine, vasopressin, milrinone, and dobutamine. Practice explaining each drug out loud in 60 seconds without notes.
• Days 5 to 8 (Pathophysiology and ventilator scenarios): Drill three arterial blood gases, two shock scenarios, and two ventilator adjustments from your own ICU patients. Practice stating the underlying physiology first, then the bedside assessment, then your intervention.
• Days 9 to 11 (Jefferson policies and DNP project pitch): Read the 85-credit Plan of Study and prepare a concise answer on your financial and logistical plan for full-time study, tri-state licensure (PA, NJ, DE), and your preferred campus (Center City, Montgomery County, or Lehigh Valley). Draft one quality improvement idea from your ICU that could serve as a DNP Scholarly Project in NU 719 and NU 720.
• Days 12 to 14 (Full mock interviews on camera): Run two 30-minute mock interviews on camera with a colleague or on Confetto, mixing pharmacology drills with behavioral questions. Cut any answer that runs past two minutes.

You are preparing to induce a 68-year-old patient with septic shock from perforated diverticulitis for an emergent exploratory laparotomy. His blood pressure is 86/48 mmHg on norepinephrine at 0.12 mcg/kg/min, and his heart rate is 118 bpm. Which induction agent and neuromuscular blocker do you choose, and what hemodynamic changes do you prepare for?

• Thomas Jefferson University: Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), Nurse Anesthesia
• Thomas Jefferson University Catalog (2026-2027): Nurse Anesthesia (DNP)
• Jefferson College of Nursing: Doctor of Nursing Practice Anesthesia 2025-2026 Handbook (PDF)
• Jefferson College of Nursing: Doctor of Nursing Practice Nurse Anesthesia 2024-2025 Program Handbook (PDF)
• Thomas Jefferson University: Tuition, Fees and Room & Board (Academic Year 2026-2027)
• Council on Accreditation (COA) of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs