University of Sheffield 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). Questions at this station have previously included:

• Tell me about yourself.
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• Tell us three good things about yourself and three bad things.
• What good/bad things would your friends say about you?
• Give me an example of where you had to be caring
• What are you most proud of?
• Why do you want to live in Sheffield for the next five years?
• What appeals to you about the Sheffield Medical School curriculum structure
• What clubs and societies at the University of Sheffield are you interested in joining?
• How was the tour? What did you like most about the university?
• Tell us about your work experience at…
• What did you learn from your work experience?
• What would you change about your work experience at…if you had the chance to repeat it?
• What experience has your previous employment given you that will be useful in a medical career?
• What are your hobbies?
• What do you do to relax?
• What’s the best book you have ever read?
  What would you do if you didn’t get in to medicine this year?
• Have you always wanted to be a doctor or is this something you have decided in recent years?
• How do you feel about working on human/ animal tissue?
• Tell me about a time when you had to work as part of a team
• Which area of medicine would you like to go into?
• If I gave you a thousand pounds and you had to spend it on YOURSELF in the next hour what would you buy?
• What have you read/seen in the news lately which is outside of the UK/Europe, and has nothing to do with medicine?

​Motivation and Insight into Medicine: This station examines your motivation for studying medicine and an understanding of the nature of medicine. Questions at this station may include:

• Why do you want to pursue medicine as a career?
• Being a doctor requires teamwork, who are the people that doctors have to work with on a daily basis?
• What are the key roles of a doctor?
• What qualities should a good doctor have? Which of the ones that you have listed do you feel you have? How do you know you have these qualities?
• What made you want to pursue paediatrics/oncology etc as a career path?
• If you are a Health Minister for a term, how would you overcome a specific medical issue?
• What is evidence based medicine?
• What are the major problems the NHS has currently?
• What set-backs do you think doctors face in their careers?
• What recent medical issues have you read about?
• What are the qualities of a good house officer?
• Do you think you’ll be able to cope as a house officer and why?
• What do you think would be the most difficult thing about being a doctor?
• What do you think of league tables? If you want to be at the top of my league table for surgery what do I do to ensure that?
• Can you tell me about the importance of IT to healthcare?
• Should failing doctors be re-educated or thrown off the register?
• What are the bad things about medicine?
• Do you think doctors practice defensive medicine?
• What kinds of diseases do you think have a high prevalence in the South Yorkshire area?
• What work have you done that would be of benefit/give you an insight to a career in medicine?
• If you were in charge of controlling MRSA in the NHS, what policies would you implement & what changes would you make?
• Do you read any newspapers/medical journals? -Can you tell us about a story you’ve read recently?
• What do I think the NHS will be like in the future?

​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 current medical breakthroughs have interested you?
• Can you tell me about the history of medicine
• Other than environmental factors and lifestyle choices, what factors will cause liver cancer?
• If you dug up a skeleton in your garden, how would you say what gender it was?

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 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:

• The law states “that an organ that has been removed from someone’s body then it belonged to the government” Give your opinion on this. How would you feel about using it for research?
• How would you deal with a patient with a hereditary form of cancer who was interested in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, whose father died from the disease?
• What is your opinion on euthanasia? Should it be legalised in the United Kingdom?
• Additional ethical dilemmas with model answers can be found in the MMI Question Bank.

Calculation Station: Calculation questions can vary from drug calculations to working out volumes, concentrations and flow rates. A range of calculation questions with techniques and model answers can be found in the Online MMI Question Bank.