Master Medicine Interviews: Common Questions and Tips
How to prepare for your Medicine Interviews?
The Medicine interview is a crucial moment in the Medicine application process. During Medicine interviews, your subject knowledge, experience and skills will all be tested through a range of challenging questions and scenarios. Interviewers are looking for you to show your understanding of medical principles and ethics, as well as your empathy and communication skills.
This guide is designed to help you better understand the Medicine interview process. We unpack different interview types, including the MMI interview, and the common medicine interview question formats that you are likely to encounter. We also offer specialist advice for Oxbridge, Imperial and UCL Medicine Interviews, as well as some practice questions and options for further interview support to boost your medicine interview prep.
Types of Medicine Interview
There are two main formats of medicine interview that you will be asked to take.
MMI Interviews: Multiple Mini Interviews
Different interview stations with scenarios, ethical dilemmas, role plays or other questions
Between 5-10 stations, each station is under 10 minutes
Used by Imperial, UCL and other top UK Medical schools
Designed to assess different soft skills e.g. communication, empathy, teamwork
U2 Tuition Tip: Get comfortable with the short interview format and quickly changing between topics. Don’t segment your interview practice too much into question types; get used to shifting from ethics to professional judgement to data analysis.
2. Panel Interviews
Group of interviewers: faculty members or doctors
Normally asking personal-statement based questions or questions about your motivation
Designed to assess your communication skills and enthusiasm for Medicine
U2 Tuition Tip: Personal-statement questions are fairly predictable. You can see our advice below on how best to prepare strong answers that showcase your knowledge and motivation.
Excel in your Medicine Interview: U2’s Medicine Mock Interview Day
U2 Tuition runs Medicine Mock Interview Days each year. These days are incredibly useful in giving students an understanding of what Medicine interviews look and feel like and have been transformative for applicants feeling overwhelmed by the interview process. With an interview skills workshop, a collaborative group interview and two tailored one-to-one interviews, the day gives students lots of opportunities to experience Medicine interviews first-hand. After the day, students will be sent in-depth feedback for their individual interviews, offering prompts for further exploration and more practice questions to go away and work on.
Types of Medicine Interview Questions
Personal Statement/Motivation Interview Questions
Before your Medicine Interview, it’s really important that you set out some time to reflect on your motivations, personal statement and relevant experience.
The most common question of any Medicine Interview is: Why do you want to study medicine?
Commonly followed by questions like:
Why do you not want to become a nurse?
Why have you applied to X medical school?
This is your first opportunity to stand out. You need to have a good understanding of what Medicine is, why it is important to you, evidence of your motivation and, equally crucially, an individual element to make your response unique and not generic.
Another key way to prepare for this section of the interview is by self-reflecting. This is an important skill lots of Medicine interview questions will test. Before your interview, think about how your experiences demonstrate or have allowed you to develop the essential skills Medical schools are looking for.
Try this question: What would you say is your biggest weakness, and how have/would you combat this?
To answer it well, you need to think of a clear example of an experience where you can show how you have combatted your weakness.
Another great reflection question is:
Following your work experience/ reading etc, what do you think will be the major challenges of a career in medicine? How do you think you will deal with these challenges?
Your interviewers will also likely ask you lots of reflection questions about your work experience. To prepare, think about:
Something you found particularly challenging
Something that changed the way you think
Something you encountered that you went on to research further
A time you have observed or demonstrated “x” quality
You also need to be confident in your personal statement. Make sure you’re happy explaining the science behind key points of your personal statement. You’ll want to show your interviewer how your knowledge has developed since writing the personal statement. It’s important to undertake further beyond-the-curriculum reading and stay up to date with medical news and developments. Think about: What have you learned about a topic since referencing it in your personal statement? Have you read a new research paper that changes or enhances one of your ideas? Have you met a patient experiencing a condition you referenced?
Ethics Questions:
For these questions, you will be presented with a challenging ethics scenario that relies on you having a strong understanding of the ethical principles of medicine. You can review the GMC guidelines here, as well as the four principles of medical ethics here.
Below is an example ethics interview question with some hints to help you:
You are a junior doctor working in a busy obstetrics and gynaecology department. You meet a 24-year-old lady who is pregnant with her first baby (primigravida). On a routine ultrasound scan, placenta praevia (a low-lying placenta) is diagnosed. In order to minimise harm to the mother and baby, you therefore recommend a caesarean section to deliver the baby at term.
You then consent the patient to have the procedure. You first describe the procedure, and begin telling her the benefits and risks associated with the procedure. However, upon hearing of the risks involved, the patient becomes distressed and tearful. She tells you that she does not want to hear about the risks, but that she understands what the procedure involves and is happy to sign the consent form anyway.
Think about:
- Why may the patient be responding in this way?
- Should you persist in telling her about the risks involved, although she is distressed? Why?
- What are the relevant ethical principles that you may use when deciding how to respond to this scenario?
- What other steps can you take to minimise distress for the patient?
Role Play:
These scenarios aren’t always directly medicine related but are common in MMIs. Role play scenarios are designed in particular to test your communication skills and your empathy. Often you will be asked to break bad news to someone, whether that’s a friend or a patient.
Pay close attention to the details of the scenario you’re presented with: are you a friend? a junior doctor?
Work on showing good communication skills. You can do this through maintaining eye contact, showing you’re actively listening (e.g. nodding your head) and don’t interrupt the other person when they’re speaking. A great way to show empathy is to warn them about the bad news. Use a phrase like “I’m in the difficult position of having to tell you” and then pause after delivering the news to give them time to process and respond.
Communication Questions:
In these questions, you will be asked to give instructions to another person, only verbally. This could be anything from giving directions on a map to telling someone how to tie their shoelaces. To perform well in these, go slowly and break down your instructions into small steps. It also adds clarity of you use clear signalling words for these, e.g. next, then. You should also be prepared to try multiple approaches and reword your answer if the person doesn’t understand the first time. This is part of the process and staying patient is important.
Communication skills are crucial throughout the Medicine Interview process. A great way to hone how these come across in interview is by working one-on-one with a specialist Medicine tutor who can support you with interview skills alongside developing your subject knowledge. Find out more about how U2’s Tutors can boost your Medicine interview performance.
Professional Judgement:
These Medicine interview questions are often role play scenarios with a ‘colleague’ or ‘patient’ and are common in MMIs. They are testing how you make judgements in pressured situations, alongside your ability to communicate clearly.
e.g. You are a 3rd-year medical student doing hospital rotations. A fellow medical student who is doing rounds with you often shows up to these sessions tired, messy, hungover, or even drunk. What do you say to them?
The emphasis here should be on empathy again; however, patient safety must always come first. Think about who you can go to or appropriate next steps.
Maths and Data Analysis:
Maths and data analysis questions test your ability to think on the spot. Often you will be asked a calculation question related to a clinical scenario, e.g. converting to metrics. Mental maths practice is super important for this. You may also be asked to interpret a graph or some data and you should be able to spot trends and draw conclusions from this.
Remember to work through any data you’re given slowly and logically, articulating your thought process. If you’re presented with a graph, describe the graph first before you explain what it means.
Problem Based Learning:
These Medicine interview questions test whether the teaching style suits you. You are presented with a written scenario and must draw out learning objectives from this scenario through a discussion with your group.
Remember this question is also testing communication skills and it’s important to show your ability to be a good active listener and take others’ ideas on board, while contributing lots to the discussion.
Tailored Tuition for Medicine Interview Success
Excel in your Medicine interview by working with a Medicine Tutor from your top choice university. U2 Tuition has a great team of Medicine tutors from Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL and other top UK Medical Schools. With tailored one-to-one tuition and support from interview prep to performance, a Medicine interview tutor can build key skills and knowledge to help you stand out as a candidate. U2’s tutors can help expand your knowledge of Medicine through engaging journal articles, news updates and reports as well as introducing university-level content as part of a study programme tailored to you and your needs. You can also work with a U2 tutor to experience mock Medicine interviews and gain in-depth feedback on your performance.
How to Structure a Medicine Interview Question Response:
When you’re so focused on showing evidence of your skills or your knowledge of the subject, it can be easy to overlook the importance of how you answer.
Your Medicine interview responses need to show your ability to think clearly and logically through the question. For longer answers, you could think about using an essay-like structure, with an introduction bringing in the main themes the question relates to, a main body with 2-3 key points, and your conclusion which reinforces the link back to the question.
For example, for the question “What do you think are the 3 most important qualities of a doctor?”, you could:
Intro: start by saying there a lot of really important skills
Body: hone in on 3 and the reasons why/any examples
Conclusion: re-affirm why these are the most important
For questions where there are two sides of the argument, you should show an awareness of both before leaping to your answer. It’s useful to talk through your thought process to the interviewer and show that you are really thinking deeply about the question. Think about setting up the debate in your introduction, considering both sides in the body, and coming to a final answer in your conclusion.
Another useful structure to follow for Medicine Interviews is STARR:
Situation: Describe the context of the scenario (e.g. work experience, a team project). Be specific and try and keep it closely related to Medicine as much as you can
Task: Explain what your role in the situation was (e.g. what was the challenge you faced? what were you responsible for?)
Action: Detail the steps you took to address the situation. This is your opportunity to highlight your skills.
Result: What was the outcome of your actions?
Reflection: Reflect on the experience and what you learned from it. This final part is really crucial for Medicine Interviews as the tutors want to see your ability to learn from your experiences moving forward. Even when the question doesn’t include a reflection prompt, try and bring in this perspective.
Further Medicine Interview Questions and Answers
You are a medical student and you have just taken a blood sample from a patient. You have lost the blood sample and have to ring the patient to explain what has happened. How would you go about doing this? Why is reflecting on your mistakes important in medical practice?
You are a GP. A 13 year old girl is asking for contraception. What do you do?
Try and find out the relationship to the partner, you should be looking out for any signs of abuse.
Why do doctors no longer wear white coats?
Read more on this here.
Why is empathy important in medicine? Can you give me an example of a situation where you have shown empathy?
Offer a definition of empathy in your words
Show a holistic understanding of its importance
Four people need a liver and they all have an equal chance of success. One has only two weeks left to live without, one is the sole carer for their father, one is a pregnant lady who would otherwise only have a couple of months with her newborn, and one has taken a large Paracetamol overdose. Assuming there was nothing to medically differentiate the patients, and considering only the ethical aspects, who would you give the liver to?
Reference that all these are good reasons for a liver transplant
The person with two weeks left to live is too short for successful intervention and the person with a couple of months left has enough time to find another donor.
Mention the ethical pillars in your answer
A patient has been newly diagnosed with HIV and does not want to disclose this to their partner. You are the GP. What do you do?
Remember to show empathy in this situation
Patient safety is first priority and this puts another patient’s safety at risk.
Do you break patient confidentiality?
What are the core values of the NHS? What do you think are the current problems faced by the healthcare system? How do you think these problems should be combatted?
Take a look at the NHS constitution. Remember to reflect on pre-covid problems.
Can you summarise what you wrote in your BMSAT essay. What would you change about what you wrote in retrospect?
What is your opinion on how the vaccine rollout was managed in the UK?
If you’re looking for further Medicine Interview questions to enhance your preparation, take a look at our in-depth Medicine Preparation Guide. Our 27-page guide features a bank of over 20 further practice questions alongside useful resources for interview, case studies of successful applicants and bonus tips.
Oxbridge Medicine Interview Tips
While a lot of the questions you might get asked at an Oxbridge Medicine interview will be similar to the ones discussed above, it’s important to distinguish between the Oxbridge Medicine Interview format and other interview styles. The teaching style of Medicine at Oxford is very different to other universities where most of your learning will happen from the hospital from day one. In Oxbridge, your first three years are ‘pre-clinical’, meaning all your learning happens in tutorials and lecture theatres. This means that Oxbridge Medicine interviews have a much stronger emphasis on science, replicating the focus of the first three years of the course.
To be well prepared for these kinds of questions, make sure you spend time consolidating your A-level knowledge in advance of the interview. Be prepared to discuss, explain and draw diagrams of all different elements of the A-Level science syllabi. This is why it’s also important to be sure you understand the physiological processes going on behind behaviours.
Another distinguishing feature of Oxbridge Medicine interviews is their focus on testing how you learn and respond to new information. This means tutors will often gradually provide you with new pieces of information during the interview. Your challenge is to understand this information and process it within your argument, deciding whether it changes your view or enhances it. This new information may come in the form of a graph or a research paper so it's also essential that you devote some of your Medicine interview preparation time to studying and analysing new data in these forms. As you do so, pay particularly close attention to the details!
This kind of format can take a bit of getting used to. Remember that the interviewer isn’t your opponent; they’re trying to work with you to help you to the right response. If you’d like the opportunity to practise this interview style in-depth, you could work with a U2 Tuition Tutor specialised in providing Oxbridge Medicine interview mentoring and support. A U2 Tuition tutor can create practice interview materials tailored to your needs, like graphs and diagrams to allow you to hone your data analysis skills, or further questions challenging you to build on your personal statement. Tutors can also host mock Oxbridge Medicine interviews and provide extensive feedback. Find out more.
Check out our guides on Preparing your Oxbridge Medicine Application and Getting into Oxford Medicine.
Final Medicine Interview Tips
Stay up to date
It’s important you stay up to date on medical news and recent medical developments. Remember that just because your personal statement is in, doesn’t mean your preparation stops. Keep reading on the topics you’ve mentioned. Keep being curious.
Self-reflect
Interviewers really want to see that you are able to reflect on your experiences. The best student is one constantly learning and looking to improve. Before your interview, ask yourself lots of these self-reflection questions and during your Medicine interviews, look for suitable moments to add a reflection to your response.
Practise, practise, practise
Communication skills and articulating your thought process clearly come through practice. Practise as much as you can with family, friends and teachers or with a specialist tutor who can provide a tailored interview preparation programme. Find out more.
How can a Tutor boost my Medicine Interview performance?
Working with a specialist Medicine tutor for interview preparation can make a huge difference to your performance.
For Medicine interviews at Oxbridge, UCL, Imperial and other top UK Medical schools, preparation is everything. While you can’t predict exactly what will come up in the interview, you can prepare key skills, approaches and techniques that make you better able to handle the interview process. Interviewers are looking for essential skills in all candidates and targeted preparation can teach you how to demonstrate these.
Our experienced tutors are all graduates from top UK Medical schools. They focus on boosting your communication skills, mastering the structure of your answers and honing your ability to self-reflect. These are crucial elements of the Medicine Interview.
One of the most valuable aspects of working with a Medicine tutor is the chance to engage in mock interviews tailored specifically to the admissions process of the Medical schools you’re applying to. This practice helps you become familiar with the types of questions you'll face, from ethical dilemmas to situational judgment, while also improving your ability to think on your feet under timed conditions. You’ll gain insights into how interviews are structured, including Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs), which require quick, clear responses across different scenarios, and build confidence for your Medicine interviews.
In addition, we offer mock Medicine interview days that replicate real interview conditions. On these days you’ll take part in an interview skills workshop to hone key Medicine interview skills and a collaborative group interview, designed to simulate the Oxbridge learning environment. Afterwards, you’ll attend two individual interviews with specialist tutors who will provide you with comprehensive feedback on your performance and knowledge. Visit our Medicine Mock Interviews page to learn more.
Beyond interview preparation, our tutors are able to support with all aspects of the Medicine admissions process. Looking for guidance in crafting an outstanding personal statement? Need a bit of help tackling the BMSAT and UCAT? Our tutors are here to help you secure your place at a top UK Medical school.
Find out more about the range of ways our tutors can support your Medicine application.
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