University of Manchester Medicine Interview Questions

​General/Personal Statement Station: This station will reflect a traditional Medicine interview encompassing your experiences in a caring role as well as your capacity for self-reflection. You should be prepared to substantiate all mentions from your personal statement as well as comments from your tutor references (the latter of which, candidates will not know). Motivation and Insight into Medicine: This station may cover both your motivation to study medicine as a career as well as your ability to discuss issues of a wider nature in the field of medicine.

• What made you decide to study Medicine?
• Why do you want to be a doctor, rather than a nurse?
• Why do you want to study at Manchester?
• What are the advantages of PBL?
• What are the roles of a doctor?
• If you had a terrible day, your patient died, and you come home at 3:00 am, what would you do to unwind/de-stress?
• What are the bad points about being a doctor?

​Science/Medical Station: In this station, you will not be expected to have detailed knowledge of medical processes. However, the interviewers will expect you to have an informed layperson’s view on contemporary aspects of medicine, particularly those of current media interest. Recent questions have included the following, with model answers available in our Online MMI Question Bank:

• What are the differences between primary and secondary care?
• What do you think will be the main advancements in medicine in the next 20 years?

• How would you protect yourself from litigation?
• What factors affected the health of Victorians?
• What differences do you think there will be when you’re a doctor?
• Should politicians disclose statistics regarding surgeons’ success rates?
• What changes in the last 50 years or so have affected the health of the nation?
• What possible problems might you face as a doctor in 20 years’ time?
• What do you think would improve the NHS/ if you were in charge – what would you do to improve it?
• You are the health minister of this country, and the Indian health minister writes to you complaining that you are taking away their good nurses. How do you deal with the situation?
• Who would you put on a panel to discuss Gene Therapy?
• How far do you think medical soaps on TV educate the public on preventative medicine? Do you think more should be done to make these dramas realistic?
• What do you think about people using the internet for self-diagnosis?

Communication Station: This skill can often be combined with other stations, rather than just in isolation. Review BlackStone Tutors “The 7 Stages of MMI Communication Stations” to maximise your performance in this station. A recent station example includes the following:

• What would you do if part of your PBL group wasn’t pulling their weight? Have a discussion with one of your colleagues about your concerns
• A range of example MMI Communication Stations  can be found in the Online MMI Question Bank.

Ethical Dilemma: The interviewers will likely provide you with an ethical dilemma/scenario. This will almost certainly not have a ‘right’ answer and instead the interviewers are interested in your ability to express and defend opposing views, as well as having an underlying awareness for medical ethics and its core principals Recent MMI ethical cases include the following:

• What are your views on cloning?
• Should the MMR vaccine be compulsory?
• Should obese people be given knee transplants?
• Should obese people be given heart transplants?
• Pharmaceutical industry: should their products be sold over the internet?
• Should plastic surgery be available on the NHS?
• What is your view of a baby on life support and placing a DNAR order?

Prioritisation Task: You will be given a sheet to read containing a scenario, and about 5 minutes to read it; from here you are expected to prioritise your care and then justify your decisions. Read BlackStone Tutors ‘5 Step Approach to Prioritisation Tasks’ to review how to tackle prioritisation tasks effectively.  Examples of these tasks may include:

• Which five patients out of the ten should get a hip replacement?
• Should a man with lung cancer from smoking be treated or a man with lung cancer not caused by smoking? What if the finance was limited? Who to spend the money to treat? Who decides who will receive the treatment?
• Further examples with model answers can be found in the Online MMI Question Bank.