Medical and Dental Interviews Explained
The purpose of the interview
These interviews are very carefully designed to test a candidate’s potential and awareness of the realities of the degree course that they are applying to. The degree courses cost a great deal of money and the universities want to ensure that they select candidates with the necessary aptitude, resilience, intellectual capacity and potential to successfully pass the course and then go on to be accomplished practitioners. This doesn’t mean that they are necessarily testing existing medical knowledge, but they are very interested in establishing an applicant’s suitability, character, capacity for learning, self-awareness and genuine appreciation of the intellectual demands and the realities of a satisfying but exhausting and emotionally challenging degree course.
Interview format
The Commonest approach to do this is through the MMI- Multiple Mini Interviews, format which offers the fairest way to candidates as they face several different interviewers in different situations, stations, assessing different skills and characteristics. They also offer the chance for applicants to recompose themselves if one station doesn’t go positively. Some universities use panel interviews but these will also follow the same basic framework of questions.
Types of questions
Motivation for medicine or dentistry is a clear starting point and questions here will evolve around experiences the candidates have undertaken to inform themselves about medicine and what they have learned from work experience. The personal statement won’t necessarily be used, but candidates should certainly be ready to expand upon anything they have mentioned in it.
Other stations will be based on the NHS and questions over a specific or current NHS issue are common such as resident doctors and the ethics around striking in the NHS. Or it might be questions over the prescription of certain drugs or not.
Other stations will seek to establish the candidate’s resilience and capacity to learn for mistakes. It is important for candidates to reflect on their own experiences in this regard for any interview.
Some questions might be completely blue sky by asking about thoughts on a photograph or drawing to see how applicants react to difficulty. Another version of this might be candidates being asked to perform data calculations in a time limit.
Stations should also be expected on Biology perhaps identifying a disease or an organ and considering its functions. In dental interviews a station assessing dexterity through a simple manual exercise can be expected.
Role-play is also another common way in which medical schools will test a candidate’s empathy and ability to communicate. Applicants also should not forget probing into why they might have selected a particular medical school and location.
How do you prepare?
In many ways you can’t. If you have already successfully submitted an excellently focused and appropriate UCAS form and performed well enough in the UCAT to be selected for interview you are already well on the way there. But what candidates can do is to practice continually and put themselves into situations where they are being asked questions by unknown adults or ideally professionals in the field to create the most realistic rehearsal format. The feedback on the candidate’s performance can be invaluable and give the final boost to help you ace your MMI. At Norton Alexander we are very fortunate to be able to call upon such professionals who can give you that realistic practice experience. You have already worked so hard to achieve that interview offer so make sure you are prepared as you can be for your interview day.
Good luck!