Updated 2 October 2026 by Ben Gallagher. Sources below.
NHS panels ask values questions because the NHS recruits for values as well as skills. The values come from the NHS Constitution, and a good answer shows one of them in something you did, not in a definition. These are the values questions panels ask across nursing, midwifery and healthcare assistant jobs, with what each one tests.
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What they're testing: Practical dignity: a calm approach, privacy, the other patients, and asking why he is doing it.
What they're testing: Practical dignity: screens, explaining, covering, choice, and not rushing or talking over the patient.
What they're testing: Honesty within your role: acknowledging fear, not guessing at prognosis, and getting the team to the bedside.
What they're testing: Compassion at the end of life: presence, comfort, dignity and knowing when to involve the nurse.
What they're testing: Keeping dignity, safety and compassion when staffing is thin, and escalating rather than cutting corners.
What they're testing: Turning the NHS values into daily behaviour, using feedback and visible leadership on night shifts.
What they're testing: Using a professional interpreter, seeing the woman alone and checking she consents and is safe.
What they're testing: Taking part in improvement: what you measured, what changed and what difference it made.
What they're testing: Speaking up for the patient with evidence while keeping a respectful working relationship.
What they're testing: Speaking up about unsafe practice at once, then using the right route if it is not resolved.
The NHS Constitution for England sets out six values that it says inspire passion in the NHS and should underpin everything it does. Individual organisations build on them to suit local needs, so a trust's own values may use different words, but they trace back to these six.
Read the trust's values on its careers page and the person specification before the interview. Prepare one real example for each of the six that fits the job, and be ready to say what you did, not what the team did.
NHS Employers describes values based recruitment as an approach that helps find people whose personal values match the values of the organisation. It says employers can use a range of methods, including pre-screening assessments, values based interviewing techniques such as role play and written responses to scenarios, and assessment centre approaches. NHS England's guidance says the approach attracts and recruits students, trainees and employees on the basis that their individual values and behaviours align with the values of the NHS Constitution, alongside existing assessments of aptitude and skills.
In practice you may be asked a direct question about a value, a scenario in which two values pull in different directions, or a role play. The common thread is behaviour: panels watch what you say you did, how you spoke about patients and colleagues, and whether you took responsibility.
Start with a short direct answer that names the value in your own words, then tell one specific story. Say who the person was in general terms, what was at stake, what you did, how you checked it helped and what you learned. Avoid describing yourself as caring. Describe the small thing you did that showed it, such as staying with a frightened patient or speaking up about a risk.
Where values conflict, name the tension. For example, respect for a patient's choice can sit uneasily with a duty to keep them safe, and the best answers show how you found a response that honoured both: explaining the risk, involving the right people and recording what happened.
The NHS Constitution lists six: working together for patients, respect and dignity, commitment to quality of care, compassion, improving lives, and everyone counts. Many trusts adapt them into their own words.
No. The 6 Cs, care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment, come from Compassion in Practice, a nursing, midwifery and care staff strategy from December 2012. The NHS values come from the NHS Constitution. Interviews often draw on both, so see the 6 Cs topic page as well.
It helps to have one strong example for each, but one story can show several values. Choose the value the question asks about and make that the centre of your answer.
Related topics: The 6 Cs, Clinical governance, Safeguarding, Civil Service Success Profiles, Nurse interview questions, Behavioral interview questions, Common interview questions.
Related: Band 5 nurse, Band 6 nurse, Band 7 nurse, Healthcare assistant.