Tips to help you smash your Medicine interviews (MMI's)

Congrats for making it this far! We've approached interview season, which can be very daunting for many of us. This year things are a little different with interviews being online. However, the concept of MMI's still remain the same.

Record and Practice aloud It sounds a bit silly, but I did this to practice. This may be especially useful this year since interviews are online. I recorded myself answering questions on my laptop to gain confidence in answering questions aloud. It gave me an idea of how long I could confidently speak for. It also ensured I maintained eye contact with the webcam. It’s important not to memorise your answers, so it doesn't sound too rehearsed. By recording your answers it can give you a general idea of points you could mention if a topic comes up. Don't worry you can delete the footage after!

Talk slowly and clearly Communication is vital, you should talk at a relatively slow pace to ensure you are clear. With things being online, sound quality may be compromised. You want to ensure the interviewer can understand what you are saying. By talking at a slow pace (not too slow) it can allow you to express your thoughts confidently and to not stumble on your words. Don't be afraid to pause and take time to gather your thoughts, this can prevent you from using many fillers such as “umm and like”. This can also help calm any nerves you may be feeling, which is completely natural.

Link back to work experience/volunteering Where possible with any question asked, try to link back to what you have learnt and reflected from your work experience/volunteering (which does not have to be in a hospital setting). It may be slightly repetitive but in an MMI interview, each interviewer doesn't not know what you have said at your last station, use this to your advantage. Linking back to your work experience/volunteering not only helps you stand out, since your experience differs from the next candidate, but shows you have the skills to help you become a good a doctor, such as EMPATHY. This is how you would show you can provide good patient care.

Multidisciplinary team Understand the importance of teamwork, more specifically the ‘multidisciplinary team’ which makes up a healthcare system. Even though you have chosen medicine it is still important to understand the key role nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and porters for example have in healthcare. We all have a collaborative role to provide good patient care.

The 6c's Learn the 6 c’s of the nhs care compassion competence communication courage commitment You could also note how you’ve shown these either through work experience/ volunteering and how they are important in providing patient care

Keep up to date with current affairs This one is important; you could be asked a question surrounding current affairs and your opinion on them. Alternatively, you could link a current affair to your answers to show the interviewer you have interest in your subject area.

Ethics For ethical questions, use the ethical pillars, autonomy, benevolence, non-maleficence, and justice to form the basis of your answer/ argument. Perhaps use a few popular cases to understand these.

In an MMI interview leave each station at the station. By this I mean, don't dwell on how each station went, forget about this and move on to the next. You have each station to essentially 'redeem yourself'. If a previous station did not go so well don't let this affect the next station. Take each station as a fresh new start with a new interviewer who has no idea what happened at your previous station. Good luck guys! Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get interview offers from all the places you have applied, you only need one and there are so many alternative routes x Keep up the hard work!

Resources I found useful The medic portal https://www.themedicportal.com/application-guide/medical-school-interview/medicine-interview-questions/ Ali Abdaal interview series https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7BImOT2srcHUbjyyTfN7hVL4ZmFc-Irc Black stone tutors https://www.blackstonetutors.co.uk/medical-school-interview-questions.html