DO
Practice. Ask your parents and friends to help you practice answering interview questions. They don’t have to be knowledgeable about medicine or the interview process, especially as questions regarding teamwork and leadership are also commonly asked at job interviews etc. Get comfortable speaking out loud and ask them for feedback on your answer and your delivery.
Familiarise yourself with the format and style of questions you’ll be asked at each medical school. There is usually information on their specific websites. Also, The Medic Portal has compiled tips for each medical school: https://www.themedicportal.com/application-guide/medical-school-interview/school-by-school-interview-tips/
Have examples or evidence ready to back up your answers – you probably naturally do this in your day-to-day conversations anyway! The Point, Evidence, Explain, Evaluate strategy works well to structure your response, as does the Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection method. The Aspiring Medics have created an ‘Experience Bank’ document which can help you prepare for this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZumStUCCs8MSl-9tlvcXaa-IV53HFbhKunk9Gov1zk0/edit.
Research the medical school you are applying to and be prepared to talk about why it appeals to you (e.g. because of the course structure, societies available, teaching hospitals etc).
Keep up to date with current medical news. Although dominated by COVID at the moment, there are still other important things happening in the medical field which you can talk about at interview (and will also help you stand out). A good way to do this is to consistently make note of any medically-related news you hear about, and then research it in greater detail as you prepare for your interviews.
Read “Good Medical Practice” and “Tomorrow’s Doctors”, documents published by the General Medical Council. These documents highlight the characteristics and principles that are important for doctors to have, and reflect what medical schools are looking for.
Be confident and enthusiastic! If you’ve been invited to an interview it’s because you deserve to be there (the medical school hasn’t made a mistake!) The interviewers will do their best to make you feel as relaxed as possible because, ultimately, they want you to succeed.
DON’T
Over-rehearse and memorise a ‘perfect’ answer for a particular question – it’s very obvious to the interviewers if you’re reeling off a pre-prepared paragraph, especially if the question has been modified slightly as you won’t be answering it directly. It’s impossible to predict every question you’ll be asked in your real interviews, so when practising with friends or family, ask them to give you some questions you haven’t prepared for in advance.
Stay silent if you don’t know the answer or are unsure – of course you should take a bit of time to process each question, but if you’re stuck, thinking out loud is the best way to approach it.
Ignore the other interviewers (if you have multiple) – try to make some eye contact with all of them even if only one interviewer is asking questions.
Undermine the roles of other medical and allied professions – a common fault when answering ‘why medicine’ or ‘why not nursing’ -style questions is to belittle the work of nurses, pharmacists etc. This is not only incredibly offensive (especially as you may be interviewed by people in these roles), but also shows a lack of understanding of the importance of teamwork and the multidisciplinary team (buzzword!) in providing holistic patient care.
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