Warwick Medical School Interview Questions

​General/Personal Statement Station: This station will focus on your work experience and most importantly the skills that you have gained from it. It may also consider your hobbies and interests, especially those which may positively contribute to societies at Warwick University.

Motivation and Insight into Medicine – This station will examine how well you have researched medicine as a career. Recent examples of questions asked in the Warwick Medicine interview include the following:

• Why do you want to be a doctor?
• Why have you decided that now is the time to train for a medical degree?
• What have you done to find out about the challenges of working in the healthcare setting?
• Medicine is a popular career. What do you think will be the most rewarding aspects of being a doctor for you personally?
• Medicine can be hard at times. What do you think will be the most challenging aspects of being a doctor for you personally?
• Following on from that, what strategies or approaches will you use to deal with the challenges you will face in becoming a doctor?

• Additional example questions with model answers are available in the MMI Question Bank.

Role play Station: This station is likely to test the personal attributes valued by Warwick Medical School (empathy, dignity, resilience and respect). A station on resilience may involve a difficult task or situation, and this will be testing your ability to stay calm when faced with a tricky scenario – your interviewers will want to see your ability to persevere with a logical thought process, responding to the situation accordingly.  To maximise your performance in these scenarios review BlackStone Tutors “6 Stages of MMI Role Play”. A range of example role play scenarios with model answers are available in the MMI Question Bank.

Ethical Dilemma: These situations often take the format of a semi-structured interview with the assessor and again, assess multiple competencies. Ensure that you can apply the four pillars of ethics to the scenario where relevant, as well as recalling the BlackStone Tutors ‘2 Sorts, 2 Sides’ approach. Recent ethical scenarios have included the following:

• Your mother rings you and asks you to come round and help with a significant family decision.  Her 70-year-old father has been diagnosed with a condition that will kill him sometime in the next five years. He can have a procedure that will correct the disease and not leave him with any long-term problems, but the procedure has a 10% mortality rate. He wants to have the procedure, but your mother is not in favour of it. How would you help mediate this issue?

• You are a junior doctor and found out that a senior staff/doctor did something which you know is wrong and might harm the patients. What would you do?

Communication/Observation Station – This station may not only test your communication skills but others as well, such as empathy, dignity, observation skills etc. It may also require you to watch a video of a consultation and comment on the effectiveness of the practitioner you have observed. For advice and guidance on how to succeed in these stations, refer to the BlackStone Tutors ‘7 Stages of MMI Communication Stations’ as well as the ‘Outside In Approach to Observation Tasks’. Recent questions have included the following:

• In the video what did the doctor do to communicate effectively with the patient?
• Tell me about a time when you have had to adjust your language and behaviour to help someone understand. What did you adjust and what was the outcome?
• In the video observed, what did the doctor do to show empathy?
• Tell me about a time when you have shown empathy and sensitivity towards someone else. What did you do and what was the outcome?
• As you know, medical training involves a lot of learning. People have different ways of learning. What techniques do you know of?

Teamwork Stations – The importance of teamwork stations are often under-estimated, with many misconceptions on how to succeed in these vitally important stations. The BlackStone Tutors MMI Question Bank offers a range of teamwork scenarios to practice as well as highlighting key tips and common pitfalls in MMI Teamwork Stations.