1. Getting into Medicine Succeeding at interviews
Jenny Mullins-White Dashi Alpion
Careers Consultant Careers Adviser
December 2013

2. Aim: to practice typical interview questions by using personal examples

3. Overview of the session
Tips on how to prepare for interviews
Practice exercise
Good preparation and research
Creating a positive impact
Responding positively to interview questions

4. Ice Breaker: Share with the person next to you a good or bad experience you have had during an interview. What have you learned from this experience? (3mins) Feedback to the group (2mins)

5. Some attributes of doctors include:
Competence
Caring
Compassion
Commitment
Confidentiality
Advocacy
Integrity
Responsibility

6. Purpose of the Interview
For the Medical School Panel:
To select the best students to become the best doctors
To assess communication skills
For You:
an opportunity to show commitment to medicine and clear reasons for wanting to study medicine
communicate to the panel your values, attitudes and personal qualities through your behaviour within the interview room

7. Interview Criteria Understanding of what doctors do
Learned about team working during work experience
Displays appropriate attitudes e.g. empathy and integrity
Communication skills in confidence and clarity of answers
Academic ability, intellectual curiosity, common sense
Ethical dilemmas

8. Types of Interviews
Panel Interviews - one, two or more interviewers asking you a set of questions
Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI) – several stations where an interview in each station will focus on a specific scenario/question
Important: Find out from the Medical School what the format of the interview will be. The preparation for the interview needs to be the same whatever the format will be.
Read around the principles of medical ethics.

9. The Panel Interview Questions testing your: motivation and commitment
qualities and competencies of a good doctor
ethical questions
knowledge of the profession, institution and current issues
The panel interview is done in the presence of either one, two ore more interviewers, and can be formal with a table between the interviewers and interviewee and the questions predetermined, or informal with the chairs arranged in a circle and the interviewers more free to ask the questions they prefer. In both cases, the interviewers are not there to intimidate you or ask you trick questions. Many of the interviews are actually quite friendly in nature and feel like a conversation.

10. Responding to competency questions
The STAR technique:
Situation – Set the context: where? when? Make it concise and informative
Task - Describe the challenge and expectations;
what needed to be done and why?
Action – Elaborate on your specific action; what did you do
Result – Explain the results/achievements/recognition
Top Tip: be prepared, be personal and use specific examples to illustrate the skills identified
Situation - Describe the situation that you were confronted with or the task that needed to be accomplished. For example, if the question is asking you to describe a situation where you had to deal with a difficult person, explain how you came to meet that person and why they were being difficult. If the question is asking for an example of teamwork, explain the task that you had to undertake as a team.
Action
This is the most important section of the STAR approach as it is where you will need to demonstrate and highlight the skills and personal attributes that the question is testing. Now that you have set the context of your story, you need to explain what you did. In doing so, you will need to remember the following:
Be personal, i.e. talk about you, not the rest of the team.
Go into some detail. Do not assume that they will guess what you mean.
Steer clear of technical information, unless it is crucial to your story.
Explain what you did, how you did it, and why you did it.
what drove your actions and reinforces the feeling that you are calculating the consequences of your actions, thus retaining full control of the situation. It provides much more information about you as an individual and is another reason why the STAR approach is so useful.
The Result - This is probably the most crucial part of your answer. Interviewers want to know that you are using a variety of generic skills in order to achieve your objectives. Therefore you must be able to demonstrate in your answer that you are taking specific actions because you are trying to achieve a specific objective and not simply by chance.

11. Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI)
At each station, the applicant is presented with a question, scenario or task
Different stations (usually 6-10) with set time limit
(e.g. 6-8 minutes)
Preparation time: instructions for the station may be posted outside the room and the applicant given 2 minutes to read and analyze the instructions prior to entering the room.
Interviewers may not have seen UCAS personal statement
See each one as fresh start

12. MMIs
MMI was created as a potentially more effective means of assessing qualities that lie outside the realm of grades and test scores
Types of stations may include:
Ethical dilemmas or questions about policy or social issues.
Interactions with an actor
Standard interview questions.
A task requiring teamwork.
Essay writing
A rest station.

13. Preparation and research
Research the school’s website/prospectus
Re-acquaint yourself with the personal statement
Reflect on your work experience
Keeping up to date with science and health news
Practise predictable questions
Ask students what do they think some of the predictable questions are?
Tell us about yourself?
Why do you want to be a doctor? What do you think becoming a doctor entails? Why doctor and not any other caring profession?
How do you relax?
Do you have any questions for us?
There is no excuse to answer predictable questions poorly

14. Activity: Explain to the person next to you what is in your personal statement (3mins) Feedback to the group (2mins)

15. What are some of the predictable questions?
Why do you want to be a doctor?
What attracts you most and least about this Medical School?
Do you read any medical publications?
Tell us about Hippocrates/oath
Do you think doctors should set a good example to their patients in their own lives? How or why this might be difficult?
The Hippocratic Oath is an oath historically taken by physicians and other healthcare professionals swearing to practice medicine ethically and honestly. It is widely believed to have been written either by Hippocrates, often regarded as the father of western medicine, or by one of his students.

16. Making a positive impact
Plan journey and arrive 10 minutes before interview
Have all relevant ID and documentation with you
Prepare good examples for questions
Be interesting and enthusiastic!
Be calm, polite, breathe deeply and SMILE! Remember that 70% of communication is non-verbal

17. Activity: Write an example of a challenging situation and what you learnt from it (5mins) Feedback to the group (2mins)

18. Strong answers Clarify questions, take your time
Positive & assertive, focus on your input
Solid examples with results
Concise, but offer more details so they can choose
Confident delivery, body language
And include your ‘best points’
do you mean …?, or would you like me to start with …? I’d just like a moment to think about that always better than rambling irrelevantly.
I chose to… I successfully developed a … I took the opportunity to … rather than I had to… I was asked to… We…
I created a lesson plan for this difficult topic, utilising tactile and visual aids for active learning which resulted in 29 of the all the children achieving the benchmark standard or better
when I start in the job, I intend to.. I plan to… Over the school year, I’d like to…
…would you like me to explain in more detail how I achieved that?
We might come back to body language later on, if enough of you want to talk more about that
These are the examples you have thought of earlier – skills, strengths, qualities, experience: that’s how you can answer the question clearly

19. Keeping up to date with science and health news
BBC Health
NHS National Library for Health
MedicineNet
British Medical Journal (BMJ)
Student BMJ
New Scientist
The Guardian

20. Other resources http://www.medicalcareers.nhs.uk/ http://bma.org.uk/
Becoming a Doctor: Entry in 2014
“So you want to be a doctor?”
Stephen Sanders, David Metcalfe and Harveer Dev, 2011

21. Interview Exercise 15 minutes (5 minutes for each role)
Working in threes, you will have the opportunity to practice all the 3 roles
Interviewer; Interviewee; Observer
Use the questions from the cards provided
10 minutes group feedback
Stop them after 1 minute to see how many people have just starting discussing “how hard is this question? I hate doing things like this…” And restart emphasising this is a practice attempt at answering this question.
How difficult did you find that?
It’s likely you will be asked about statements you make on your application and about current affairs in education, particularly if they directly affect your key stages.
Question areas are going to be around 1) YOU and what you can do 2) the JOB, class, curriculum, school affairs 3) EDUCATION generally so if you know these topics you’ll be fine! More example questions are available on the “Interviews” handout – should be available on Moodle.

22. What next? Book an appointment online via the Careers Network website:
Follow us on @ MDScareers